Satin Town
by coalitiongirl
Summary: Emma Swan meets the evil queen, raising her son in a fairy tale land inexplicably located in Maine. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
1. Chapter 1

On nights like these, it's easier to shut out the world than consider where she's going or what she's doing. She doesn't make a habit of drinking too much, not while her one means of fulfillment is dependent on her being alert and wary, and bears the emptiness that never stops tugging at her heart with well-honed practice. She thinks little of love and family and focuses only on her next job.

But tonight's her birthday and it feels almost dishonest to deny that there's a void within her, a severe lack of…_something_ she's been searching for for a lifetime. And when she makes a wish on a cupcake she'd bought herself, her mind wanders to a desire she'd never admit aloud. _I don't want to be alone tonight_.

The doorbell rings.

She blinks, wondering if the new neighbors had given someone the wrong address again. But no, when she opens the door there's a little boy standing behind it, simmering with contained eagerness and staring at her expectantly. He's wearing an odd little brown cloak that dips past his knees and is baggy over grey boots and a sewn tunic, and she thinks for a moment that he must have come from the theater around the corner before he speaks. "Are you Emma Swan?"

"Yeah. Who are you?"

He squirms, but his eyes are still intent on her, and she gets the distinct impression that he's decided she passes muster before he responds, "My name's Henry. I'm your son."

* * *

For a kid who doesn't seem to know how to dress normally, he's pretty confident- or maybe it's her own disorientation at this development that lets him get the better of her. He forces his way into her apartment and her fridge and makes bold threats about how he isn't leaving, and for a moment she can admit that there might be some family resemblance there.

"For a kid who dresses like a reject from Lord of the Rings opening night, you're pretty savvy," she retorts when he insists he'll tell the police she kidnapped him, oh-so-smug.

He wrinkles his brow. "This is all different. I knew about your metal carriages and money, but the clothes are weird here. And the people. A man on the carriage tried to get me to come to his home instead of here."

Something within her twitches uncomfortably at the thought of this child venturing into a strange city, vulnerable and confused and searching for her. "Yeah, strangers here aren't all going to be your friends."

"It was okay." He downs half a cup of orange juice and makes a face. "I showed him my dagger and he went away."

"Is that some kind of euphemism? Because you are much too young for- _Kid_!" She jumps backward instinctively, staring at what is certainly a dagger that he's suddenly brandishing at her. It's small and sleek with a jeweled handle and a sharp edge, and the _Keep away from children! _warning label is a given. She'd _think_.

"The Huntsman gave it to me," he says, tucking it away. He catches her eye where she's still standing, stunned, and lowers his head. "Okay, I took it from his collection when he wasn't looking. But my tutor says that you should never go on a journey unprepared!"

"With a _dagger_?" She snatches his bag from him, ignoring his "hey!" when she retrieves the weapon from it. "What the hell kind of place did you grow up in?"

He dips his head, sullen. "Lots of kids have weapons. Mother just doesn't let me have any of my own because 'I won't need them.'"

"Damn right you won't. You live on some kind of Comic Con commune?" She watches with vague approval when he disposes of his cup in the garbage, unasked. The kid might wind up being a psychopath, but at least he has decent manners.

"Something like that." He shrugs. "Mother has Internet, though. She doesn't let anyone else have it, but she says it's important that I learn about your world."

"_My _world?" It had been a closed adoption and for good reason, but when she'd meant to give her baby the chances she'd never had, she hadn't thought he'd be taken in by a medievalist cult. Or wherever Henry had come from. "Listen, kid, I'm gonna take you home."

"Okay," he says agreeably.

"Where's home?"

"Storybrooke, Maine." He beams at her for a moment under that silly costume, and she shakes her head, amused.

"Seriously?" These people take roleplaying their fantasies to a whole new level, and she feels a sudden pang, thinking about this boy who could have been her son being brainwashed by them. And when she heads for the car, Henry trailing behind, she finally admits to herself that she cares just enough to make sure that Henry is safe, wherever his home is.

* * *

Henry is fascinated by the front seat of her car. "You can see straight ahead!" he marvels. "Like sitting in a carriage but so much faster. You must miss seeing all the animals!"

"You sit in carriages a lot?"

He shrugs. "Well, there isn't much land to cover. But Mother and I go for rides in the afternoons while she surveys the kingdom." He frowns, and she can't tear her eyes away from the troubled look on his face. "Not always, though. Not when she-" He breaks off, staring out the window again.

_I can't care_, Emma reminds herself, but she musses his hair a little with her free hand and says, "Seems like she takes good care of you." He's healthy and bright-eyed and smart enough to make it from his fantasyland commune to Boston, and even if his mother's a little weird, she can't deny that.

Well, that and the fact that his mother had somehow lost track of him for long enough for him to steal weaponry and sneak down to Boston.

Henry's face is dark when she glances to her right again, his hands clutching his satchel as he responds. "No, she doesn't. She's evil."

"Oh-kay." It isn't her business if she'd gotten in the middle of some family spat, but Henry keeps talking, and she can't stop listening. _Not my business. Not my business. Not my- _"I'm sure your mother loves you very much, no matter what you argued about."Was she always this terrible with kids? Because Henry is shaking now, and his eyes are getting round and watery and she thinks he might cry. Jesus, she has no idea what to do if he cries.

But he doesn't say anything, and she's quiet too, shaking off stirrings of guilt at having _cared _again for this little boy who seems so bold and terrified all at once and looks at her like she hangs the moon when she's done nothing to deserve it. She focuses on the road again, stealing glances at Henry every few minutes, and she starts to see it- the set of his jaw, so similar to hers. That thick brown hair just a touch shorter than Ne- than his father had worn it. The shape of his eyes, narrowed and stubborn like she's seen in the mirror a thousand times.

She remembers the baby she'd barely held in her arms before giving him away and marvels at the little boy who belongs to someone else, and it's impossible not to get lost in old, bitter memories as they drive along.

Then Henry speaks, and she's jolted into this new reality again. "She can't love anyone," he replies at last. "Even me."

"I'm sure that's not true."

He's staring at her when she looks at him, his gaze knowing and just a little scornful. "Have you ever met an evil queen?"

She laughs aloud, unable to restrain her disbelief this time, and quiets only when Henry's face falls.

* * *

"You need to leave your carriage here," Henry announces when they finally near Storybrooke.

"Car," she corrects him, slowing. "Where's your house?" There are no streetlights, and only a faint glow of the moon lights up the town ahead. If she squints ahead, she can just barely make out a thick wood in front of them.

"Past the edge of the forest. But there are no roads for cars in the kingdom."

"Are you kidding me?" But now that she's looking for it, she can see the narrow dirt pathway just past the town line. "This really is a commune, isn't it." Complete with evil queens and carriages and- "A _castle_?" It's lit from the inside with a glow warmer than your standard electricity, but it's enough to illuminate the tall stone towers high above the trees.

Henry smirks in the darkness. "Told you she's a queen."

"Aren't you cute." She twitches her lips at him, unamused. "Anything else you want to tell me about this town?"

He lifts his head high, turning smartly and leading the way into the woods. "I don't think you're ready for the rest yet. Not until you see it for yourself."

* * *

She sees it.

She doesn't quite know if she's ready to believe it just yet, though, not when Henry is leading her through a forest- an _enchanted _forest, he tells her- and pointing out huts and chattering about the occupants as though this is all _normal_, as though these people aren't living five miles away from a normally lit highway and a gas station by a Wendy's and how can an entire town be so entrenched in this fairytale fiction?

"No one crosses town lines," Henry explains, which isn't an explanation at all and everything inside her is rebelling at the idea of consigning this boy back to a world so delusional.

The forest parts after a half hour of walking, and Emma has no idea how she's going to find her way back through it, but she's distracted from her thoughts by the castle towering in front of them, separating the woods on either side to create spacious grounds. "We're home," Henry announces, bounding forward to run across the lawn to the front door.

"Did the adoption people even check out where you lived before they gave you away?" Emma mutters, following him into the castle. There's a guard dressed in armor (armor! Like it's the fucking Middle Ages!) at the entrance, but when Henry waves her in, the guard steps back as well. She eyeballs him for a minute, staring at him in a vain attempt to see if he's as aware of how ridiculous this is as she is, but his face remains an impassive mask.

"Emma!" Henry pops out from an upstairs balcony and she hurries up, following him through elaborately decorated halls with suits of armor and embroidered tapestries, past enormous rooms with even higher ceilings, all the way to their right until they reach a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. Whoever had designed this fantasy must have been fabulously wealthy, she's certain, and clearly had too much time on their hands. _Evil queen, indeed._

"Where's your mom?" Emma asks, as Henry pushes open the doors and reveals a library straight out of a storybook. They're surrounded by tall shelves, high up the walls and reaching a second-floor balcony. Portraits dot the walls and the windows are stained glass images of kings and queens and animals, and when Emma squints around she can even see tables up the stairs with quills and scrolls on them. The only anachronism is the laptop at an old-fashioned sitting table near them, hooked up to wires that lead directly into a box that is-

She blinks, but the box is still casting off a purple light that dances wildly inside the box, flickering in and out and changing colors as she watches. "Not your grandma's wifi, huh?"

Henry turns to her with a quizzical look. "What's a wifi?"

"Never mind."

"Henry!" There's a loud sound like books toppling over, and a bird chirps somewhere near the windows as a woman comes into view. She's fair-skinned and dark-haired and would have been very pretty if not for the worry that darkens her face as she runs to them, throwing her arms around Henry and pulling him tight to her. "I've been worried sick! Where have you been? The guards have been searching the forest for hours, but we feared you-" She stops short, her eyes widening as she catches sight of Emma. "Henry, what have you _done_?"

"Uh, hi," Emma begins, feeling suddenly silly for worrying about Henry's well being. This woman clearly loves him, and while she might have surrounded herself with the most unimaginable fantasy, there's no doubting the softness in her eyes when she looks at her son.

"I found her!" Henry announces, pulling out of the woman's grasp. "I found my birth mother!"

"And you brought her _here_?" The woman's voice goes high, almost unnaturally so, and when she looks at Emma again Emma can see something familiar and almost chilling in her eyes. _Fear_. And she knows instinctively that this woman isn't afraid of her, but for her.

She sticks out her hand, awkward. "I…uh. I'm Emma."

"Emma," the woman echoes, and the fear in her gaze intensifies, coupled with something Emma can't read altogether. "Your name is Emma." The woman glances at Henry for a moment, then back at Emma, and now there's wonder in her voice. "Henry…"

"I'm so sorry for interrupting your family, but…" Emma shrugs a little, nodding to Henry in explanation. And there's something just sweet and welcoming about this woman that she ventures further. "I'd, um…I'd love to hear more about this place. Is this a commercial thing, like a tourist attraction or something?"

"Oh!" The woman shakes herself out of her daze and blinks at her. "I'm not Henry's mother. I'm his tutor." She takes Emma's hand with the tip of hers, resting her fingers lightly on Emma's palm as she curtsies. "My name is Snow."

"Snow. As in…Snow White?" Emma guesses. A castle full of fairytale characters? Someone must be making money off this, and an artificial fairytale tourist trap is a relief compared to the cult theory. Henry's just a kid, of course he'd believe it's all real, but it's something he'll grow out of in time.

But there's nothing artificial about the way that Snow jerks. "Then you know me!" she exclaims, rising again. "You know about the curse!"

"Curse?" Emma repeats.

"You're Emma!" Snow says, her eyes shining. "And you know about the curse!"

And then this stranger is hugging her like she'd been hugging Henry moments before as though vacuum-welded to her, and Emma can't breathe for a minute before she finally manages, "Not that I have a problem with unconditional affection from strangers or anything, but what curse? What are you talking about?"

Snow lets go almost reluctantly, her eyes tracing Emma's face as she does, and when Henry finally says, "She doesn't know," the other woman releases her fully.

"I see," she murmurs, stepping back. Her eyes widen again. "But you can't be here! Henry, what were you thinking, bringing her here? If the queen finds out, she'll-"

"Really, Snow, what did you think I'd do?" a voice made of steel drawls from the doorway, and before Emma can turn around, she's being thrown through the air by a freak windstorm that comes from nowhere, pinning both her and Snow against the closest wall of books. "You lose my son, and now you're entertaining outsiders? Don't we all know how this ends?"

_She _steps forward, and there's no doubt in Emma's mind, even while held immobile by this unnatural wind, that she's met Henry's evil queen at last. "I keep you alive so that you may know suffering as I have," the queen says, her voice silky with quiet rage. "But there are better, more…creative ways to cause you pain." She drags out each word, and when Emma can tear her eyes away from her, she sees that Snow is regarding the queen with fear and…_compassion_.

The queen's eyes narrow, and Emma is seized with the insane desire to deflect her fury from the far-too-kind woman beside her. "Hey. Hey!"

The queen turns, an eyebrow raised in delicate disbelief that teeters somewhere on the edge of utter fury. "She didn't do anything," Emma feels obliged to respond, straining to get the words out while the impossible pressure still holds her to the wall. "I came here with-" She reconsiders, catching sight of Henry's frightened, defiant face. "I came here on my own."

"_That_ is impossible." The queen abruptly shifts direction to saunter over to Emma, eyes glittering against another perfectly featured face. She stands in front of Emma, so close that Emma can feel her warm breath ghosting over her face. "What are you here to find, I wonder? Who sent you? That bastard Rumpelstiltskin?"

"The guy with the name?" Emma says dumbly. This is ridiculous. This whole town is ridiculous, but she's beginning to admit to herself that this isn't a freak wind holding her in place, and this woman has every bit the presence of an evil queen. "He's real too?"

"Oh, don't act the fool," the queen purrs. "It's so very…unbecoming." She reaches out to touch Emma's face, tracing her cheekbone down along the line of her jaw, and Emma's skin tingles with every caress as though seared by living flames. "It's no use, whatever your motives here. You will be quite the addition to my hall." She waves her hand and the pressure is gone, and Emma is falling forward and slamming into the queen's outstretched palm.

The queen draws her other hand back, two fingers outstretched with purpose Emma can't comprehend, and she brings them forward just as Henry shouts, "Mother, no!"

And just like that, the hand is stilled, and Emma draws her knees up to attack the other woman, seething at the way she'd gotten the better of her so easily. But when Emma kicks upward, the queen is already walking away, hurrying toward Henry with renewed purpose. And when she wraps him in a hug as tight as the one Snow had given him, Emma can only stare. "Where have you been?" she demands, pulling away from him. It's harsher than Snow's words, and there's a wild fear there in the catch of her voice, imperious as it's meant to be.

"I found Emma," Henry says, and he isn't frightened anymore. He's staring at his mother, stubborn and unyielding, and Emma is suddenly very afraid of what the queen might do to him if he says anything else. "She's my mother."

The queen turns back to Emma, her face thunderous. "_You_ are the woman who gave birth to Henry?"

Some deep-seated sense of self-preservation reacts to that, and Emma can suddenly force a smile onto her face and form normal words again. "Henry managed to hunt me down in Boston. I was just giving him a ride home, but I'll be heading back now."

She sees his face fall but refuses to assure him that she isn't going anywhere, that she won't leave this town until she can ensure Henry's safety- with or without this terrifying mother of his. There are things he's better off not knowing, especially while he's still a slave to the whims of a mercurial queen.

"I'm afraid that's impossible," the queen retorts. "Your vehicle has been removed from the kingdom's entrance. No one leaves to the world outside, not after seeing what is here. You will grace my hall with your presence."

"No!" Henry almost shouts, and then he's throwing himself forward and wrapping himself around Emma, impotent little arms tight around her as he buries his face in her stomach. She touches his hair with the tips of her fingers, wondering at the way that his hug can make her hurt more than the queen's threats do. "No, Mother, please don't do this! Please don't take her away!"

And Snow speaks for the first time since the queen had threatened her, soft and persuasive. "Regina, he'll never forgive you." Emma glances at her, the woman she'd only known of from storybooks as a gentle princess, never a servant in the evil queen's palace with eyes steely and determined to save a woman she barely knows.

The queen- _Regina_- stalks over to Snow and slaps her once, leaving pale skin red where her hand had hit. "Very well," she says, and she doesn't look at either Henry or Emma as she speaks. "The Huntsman will escort you at all times. You will not leave the castle grounds. You will not speak to Henry." Henry's mouth opens in protest, but Emma shakes her head once before he can provoke his mother. His mouth closes. "If you do either, you will be thrown into the cell where you belong." She walks past Emma, a cold smile crossing her face. "I suspect our…problem will resolve itself soon enough."

The words are a threat but the tone is a promise, and she tenses against Henry's arms, watching the satiny red material of the queen's dress hug her body as she saunters out. "Henry, you're to go to your room immediately. You will meet me in the gardens at dawn to discuss your punishment."

"Yes, Mother," Henry mumbles, letting go of Emma and tossing her one final look before he scurries out of the room, Regina's hand settling on his shoulder and clenching as they walk.

And when they're gone, Snow murmurs the one thing on Emma's mind as well. "She surrendered too quickly."

This is far from over.

* * *

XXXXXXX

Thanks go to Liz for looking over this chapter and talking out this story with me in the first place. I'm probably going to update this fic weekly until it's finished, when possible. This is a new fandom for me and I'm very out of my comfort zone, so I'd appreciate any feedback y'all can give me!


	2. Chapter 2

_Magic is real here. Here is a fairytale land. The boy I gave birth to is being raised by an evil queen. _It's been her mantra all night, the last words she'd thought last night and the first she contemplates this morning.

She's always been quick to adapt- her childhood and pregnancy in prison allowed nothing less- but today she's still reeling from last night, shaking and staring at stone walls and wondering how any of this can be true.

She awakens in a spare room that's probably only a step up from a dungeon, the walls bare and her blanket thin and smelling vaguely of sheep. The doors are locked from the outside and when the Huntsman comes to collect her, she's still sitting up in her cot dressed in the grey shift she'd been given, staring out the window in a sort of dazed bemusement.

"Snow gave me clothing for you," he says, holding a pile out to her.

Emma looks at him- really looks, for the first time, since last night she'd barely seen more than his back leading her up corridors higher and higher in the castle until she hadn't been entirely sure that she wasn't about to be pushed out of a tower. He's tall, bearded, and seems vaguely irritated.

"Sorry you got stuck with babysitting duty," she ventures, accepting the clothing. Snow has given her a dress that she stares at with horror before moving it to find an overlong tunic and a pair of pants similar to Henry's from last night. Much more acceptable. "You'd probably rather be…hunting, I guess."

He lets out a raspy laugh from deep in his throat. "What I'd rather isn't relevant anymore. I belong to the queen. And I failed both her and her son last night, so I pay the price."

He turns brusquely. "Get dressed if you want to leave this room today."

The door slams behind him and Emma regards the clothing again, repeating her mantra in a whisper as she sniffs the tunic and catches another farm animal scent. But the cloth is cool against her skin and surprisingly soft, and when she's fully dressed she feels like maybe she wouldn't be terrible in a fight in this outfit. The queen might have magic that can overpower Emma with a command, but she's still determined to be ready if it ever comes down to fists and kicks again.

She's stretching her limbs, testing her reach with semi-restrictive material holding her knees and shoulders back, when she hears the door open behind her. She keeps stretching, waiting for the Huntsman to speak and feeling his eyes on her as she punches outward again and again.

He doesn't say anything, and after a few minutes she's feeling bold enough to ask, "So, can I have a tour of the castle today?" Armories, escape routes, wherever Henry is hidden away today- those are her priorities, though she isn't naive enough to tell this to the man who's said so frankly that he belongs to the queen.

He snorts. "I'm not a guide. Tour it yourself."

_Well._

* * *

She walks down every hallway, checks every open door that the Huntsman doesn't stop her from entering, and climbs every staircase she can, memorizing the layout of the castle as she does. She isn't ready to leave yet, not until she sees Henry again, but she's also cautious enough to plan her escape route in advance. Regina doesn't seem the kind of queen who'd let her go with a wave and a goodbye.

The bottommost floors are more like catacombs than a basement, and she wonders how much of the town they snake out under. She doesn't explore them in depth, not when she hits a closed door in the hall and the Huntsman gives her a knowing look and suggests that they return upstairs.

She returns to the library in hopes of seeing Henry there, but neither he nor Snow are sitting at the table today. Instead, a blond man is leaning over the laptop, his brow furrowed as he types.

"I didn't know the queen lets anyone use her computer." It's meant to be a murmur to the Huntsman, but it's loud and accusing in the silence of the library.

The man looks up with a sneer. "I am not merely _anyone_," he snaps, straightening. "I am the palace physician and Her Majesty requires that I be educated in all matters of illness and health." He eyes her. "And you are…"

"An outsider," the Huntsman cuts in, putting a hand on Emma's arm to steer her out of the room. The last thing she sees when she follows his lead is the doctor's face turned suddenly thoughtful, and the whisper of a response.

"Then we have that in common."

She asks the Huntsman for clarification, but he shrugs uncomfortably. "She crosses worlds and finds new men to do her bidding. I won't be the one to ask her about it." He raises an eyebrow, his eyes sparkling with what she can only describe after seeing it all morning as morbid amusement. "Why don't you try?"

She narrows her eyes, unimpressed. "And you? She got you from around here, didn't she?"

"I was given an mission I couldn't carry out. She took my…she took me."

This she remembers, vague as her knowledge of fairytales is. "She sent you to kill Snow White."

He startles, something in his face closing and his expression guarded again. "Yes." He quickens his pace, and she trails after him, not ready to cap this discussion just yet. The Huntsman is her only guide to this world now, no matter what he says, and she needs all the help she can get. Knowledge, in this case, might be the only thing that'll help her survive.

"You said the queen took you. What does that mean?" The Huntsman moves even faster, and she hurries behind him, matching his pace as he storms on. "How could she force you to work for her?"

He stops at last, so quickly that she nearly crashes into him. "She took my heart from my chest," he says. "She took it captive, and as long as it is hers, so am I." He walks to the railing that overlooks the main hall where she'd entered the castle a day before. "I gave Snow her life and the queen took mine in revenge." Emma moves to stand beside him, and watches his eyes soften. "But Snow still lives."

Emma stares down at the statues that dot the room below, at the guard who stands at the door and the elaborate decorations on the wall. "Are you two…uh…?"

He laughs, acerbic again. "No. But she was good and selfless, and as long as she lives my sacrifice was not in vain." Then he's silent again, and nothing she says can prompt him to speak.

She walks down the staircase and he doesn't follow, though she can feel his gaze on her from above and she wonders at his motivations. He isn't a willing servant to the queen- does Regina have any, really? The doctor, maybe, whom she trusts with their only connection to the outside world. Certainly not Snow, whose story mirrors the one she knows up until the victory over the queen.

And how then did this all end, with the Huntsman a servant and Snow a tutor, with the queen established in her little kingdom with no other contenders? And more pressing, how does Henry tie in to all this? What kind of plan must she have for him?

She wanders the hall, rolling her eyes at the guard who draws a sword every time she nears. She wonders if he'd been punished for letting her in yesterday, and almost immediately feels a pang, thinking of the Huntsman and wondering if this guard, too, is as caged as the rest of them.

Though they seem innocuous from far, the statues are the most unnerving decorations in the room. The first one she sees is a man dressed in tight pants and a shirt that looks almost modern in comparison with what she's seen here so far, his mouth open in a scream and his eyes wide in terror. The next looks nearly as terrified, a woman with sunglasses perched at the top of her head and a…tank top?

She swallows, a dark suspicion chilling her, and hurries to the next. It's a stone statue of what must be only a teenager, his eyes tightly shut and his lips pressed together, and the detail is fine enough to make her stiffen, eyes narrowed and her heart pounding as she reads the name of the band on his t-shirt.

_"You will be quite the addition to my hall." _She remembers Regina's eyes, dark and threatening as she had prepared to do…something? Something Emma understands now, looking at all these relics of the past years that Storybrooke has been in Maine, at all these people who had stumbled across the town and been petrified to stone for their misstep. She would have been installed in this hall by now too had it not been for Henry and Snow's intervention. She might still be.

She moves from statue to statue, suddenly desperate to memorize their faces, to envision their impotent struggle as Regina moved ever closer, to imagine their terror and confusion in that moment. She can't afford to feel for them but she can't seem to stop, either, can't keep herself from aching for these poor people who probably had so much more to live for than she ever had and now have nothing at all.

She pauses at the last statue, standing tall in the space between the two staircases upstairs, and sees the differences there at once. This one is dressed in armor and holds a sword out, a vision from a fairytale rather than a hapless tourist. And while the others are all terrified, crying out for help or surrendered to despair, the final statue's face is almost satisfied, as though whatever comes next is meaningless. He stares straight ahead and there's a tiny smile curving his lips, and Emma is drawn to him in ways she can't explain.

"His name is Charming," comes a soft voice from her left, and when Emma turns, Snow is approaching, her eyes on the statue's face.

"What happened?" There's no mistaking the love with which Snow regards the statue, in the way she traces its features with one cupped palm.

Snow shakes her head. "He fell…Regina took him in those last minutes before the curse set in." She smiles, half-hearted. "I suppose it was a relief to see him here, once I recovered from the shock of it. I'd feared he was dead."

"I'm sorry." There's nothing more she can say, and she feels more and more distant and invested in this world at the same time. Prince Charming, a stone sculpture of final defiance within a town that shouldn't exist. Had it only been a day since she'd been sitting in her apartment, alone in the world on her birthday? She's still alone, but here there are people who've cared- who care about each other and the greater good more than the cynic in her would have accepted ever before. But this is a land with magic, and now she can believe in a huntsman or a prince who would choose to fight for what he believed in. "This curse…it's why you're here, right? Here in Maine."

"Here in the castle," Snow adds, stepping away from the statue. "We were…we had won. She was exiled, we were all safe at last, I was expecting a child…" She touches her stomach for a moment, almost unconsciously. "She took away our happy endings and built a world around herself. And we've been frozen in time for almost three decades since, locked into this castle or the woods and living under her thumb." She sighs heavily, and Emma's afraid to ask what had happened to the child.

Snow offers the information anyway. "The baby… we sent her away from Regina, out of this eternal hell. Rumpelstiltskin had claimed that she was the savior, that she could break the curse once she came back."

"But she didn't," Emma guesses, and Snow stares at her, inscrutable.

"That remains to be seen."

Then the baby hadn't returned yet, might never return, and Emma swallows, more acquainted with that particular level of pain today than she had ever been before. "How is Henry today?" she asks, glancing up at the Huntsman to see if he's on guard at the question. He's looking past them, out the long rectangular windows that look out on the castle grounds.

Snow smiles, old tragedy replaced with understanding. "He's happy you're here. His mother has forbidden that he leave his room today, but his spirits are high and he can't stop talking about you."

Emma shakes her head. "Is he even aware of what he's brought on both of us?"

Snow reaches out, laying a hand on her arm. "He's still young, and he believes in happy endings so fervently. He doesn't understand the risk in bringing you here."

"No, I guess not." And she can't begrudge him for seeking her out, now that she's met his mother and knows just a fraction of what he must know about her. She remembers huddled in assorted foster homes as a child, dreaming about her parents coming back at last and sweeping her away to somewhere where she belonged. She'd been naïve and optimistic, and it had taken the world knocking her down time and again before she stopped believing.

Even now, there's a part of her that's equally determined that Henry should never suffer that.

* * *

She's sitting in the library at sunset, flipping through a book without focusing on the words. She eyes the computer for what must be the third time in the past half hour, but this time she ventures, "If I use it, will you stop me?"

The Huntsman ignores her, which she takes as permission. She considers her situation. Her phone had died last night when she'd tried to make a call, and this is her only connection to the outside world. On the other hand, who's out there that she can contact, anyway? There had been a statue of a state trooper in the main hall, taunting her with the reminder that magic is beyond the law. No one's waiting for her, no one's going to come after her. She's on her own, and the Internet won't spare her.

She slumps in her seat at that realization, freed from her to hover mockingly at the edge of her consciousness, a constant reminder of how little she matters. Of how alone she is in the world.

Here, at least, there's a little boy who can't stop talking about her, who she can't stop thinking about. _Maybe I'm better off as a prisoner of an evil queen_, she muses, and smirks at the idea.

Said evil queen comes striding into the library a half hour later in a whirl of purple velvet and lace, and when she sees Emma, her smile widens into something dark and predatory. "Well, well, well. Hello, Miss Swan. I hope you've been enjoying my palace and its…amenities." Her eyes glitter, and Emma is suddenly certain that the queen has heard all about her time in the hall.

She forces herself to smile. "It's a nice castle," she agrees, smiling back coolly. "I'm glad Henry's grown up with so much…space."

"Indeed." Regina walks closer, and Emma tenses, but instead the other woman reclines on the seat opposite the one where Emma's sitting, the queen a picture of confident superiority and grace. "He has lacked for nothing. He's been given an education fit for a prince, he trains with the best instructors with his bow, and I've also ensured that he be prepared in the event that we ever find ourselves leaving the kingdom." She nods to the laptop, almost casual. "Although it doesn't seem like I'll be run out of town by an angry mob anytime soon." She laughs. It sounds cold and artificial and makes Emma's hair stand on end.

"What about other kids?" she asks when it seems apparent that Regina has nothing more to say.

"Hm?"

"Other kids. Friends," Emma clarifies. "Someone his own age to play with. Does he have anyone?" Regina stares at her blankly, and Emma can't stop herself from continuing. "Look, you can go through the motions of whatever you think a kid needs, but Henry's going to have some needs that you can't fulfill by keeping him inside and away from everyone else."

Regina's face darkens. "Miss Swan, I love my son. I give him everything his heart desires, and if you're trying to undermine me-"

"You locked him in his room and tried to turn his birth mother to stone in front of him!" she says, incredulous. "If that's how love works, I'm glad no one ever loved me!"

Regina sits up, leaning forward. "Do not presume to tell me how to love my son," she hisses. "You know _nothing_." Her lip curls. "Did you think you could meet him for a few hours and know him? How much do you think he knows about you? He talks about you as though you're some kind of savior, come here to rescue him from the monotony of princehood, but he knows nothing about you." She stands, bending forward to look Emma in the eye. "I have done my research, Miss Swan. I know enough about you to crush Henry's faith in you in an instant."

Emma remembers a young girl, staring at a pregnancy test in a prison deep in Arizona, and she's afraid for the boy with fragile dreams and a cruel mother. "You wouldn't do that to him."

It's a wild hope more than anything, an optimism that nothing about Regina deserves, but it's only a moment before Regina blinks and shakes her head, stepping back so Emma can rise. "I suppose there are simpler ways to keep you under control," the queen agrees.

She strikes so swiftly that Emma doesn't have a chance to defend herself before Regina's fingers are sinking into her chest. And then she feels…

Different, something dark and intimate within her, and it's cruel and painful but there's something almost like warmth under the icy cold of the queen's touch, a perverse sense of being _needed_, being penetrated for her pure essence by another, and her head drops forward against Regina's forehead, overcome by the sensation as her heart is stolen.

_Is this how this should feel?_ she wonders, inane in the face of destruction. Her heart is throbbing in Regina's grasp and she can feel the hand contracting and expanding, in-out-in-out-in-out with every nerve in her body. _Should it last this long?_ There's a sheen of sweat covering Regina's forehead now and the other woman's hand is still inside her, pulling, pulling, as the warmth grows stronger and overcomes them both-

-And Regina is thrown backward by the force of it as something white and pure erupts from Emma, taking them both by surprise, and Emma clutches her chest and gasps for breath as Regina smashes against a glass window headfirst and lands in a heap on the ground in a shower of glass.

She's torn between _What the hell was that? _and _Oh god, I killed Henry's mother_ before she can move again, the white energy still an afterimage in her eyes as she charges forward. "Regina!" The other woman is moaning, still out of it, and Emma drops down to inspect the damage. "Get the doctor!" she barks out to the Huntsman, kneeling over the woman.

"You're a fool," Regina mumbles, her eyes opening. There's a piece of glass embedded in her forehead that has sliced a trail across one eyelid, and the blood is running down into them. Emma dabs at it with the edge of her tunic, trying to stop the flow. "I'm going to kill you, and you spend your last few moments alive here instead of running?"

Emma stares at her. "So, what, this is your plan? Pretend that I tried to hurt you and call it self-defense so Henry won't hate you?"

"Push that cloth harder," the queen orders. "And take the glass out. What, were you just going to keep it in there? And now I know that you're one of Rumpelstiltskin's agents, of course I'm going to kill you." She grabs Emma's wrist, flattening it against the side of her face. "Tell me, how did he find you? What did he promise you to betray Henry? _What was that magic you used_?"

"What?" She focuses on the wound, rather than the woman threatening her. "I didn't do that magic thing! And you were trying to take my heart!"

"Well, _I_ didn't stop myself," Regina retorts, and Emma would have laughed had the situation not been so dire. The queen is almost humanized like this, still regal and commanding but more snippy than genuinely terrifying. "What enchantment do you have there that your heart is so protected?"

"Enchantment," Emma repeats. She presses one hand over Regina's face and yanks the glass with the other. "I made it into Crazy Town last night. No way I'm already all enchanted!"

Regina runs a hand over the cut, and it fades away to smooth skin in an instant. "Don't play the fool, Miss Swan. It's hardly becoming."

"I didn't _do_ anything," Emma protests. "Which is more than I can say for you!" She rubs her forehead, frustration and confusion and adrenaline combining into a doozy of a headache. When she looks up, Regina's sitting up, reaching for her heart again.

"Ah!" The queen sags in the next moment, and only then can Emma see the shards of glass sticking out of her dress like spikes, some deep enough that they must be injuring her with every movement.

She's about to order the queen onto her back (and there's a part of her that's vaguely enthralled by that concept, but she attributes it more to the dark corset teasing her than any genuine attraction to the paragon of cruelty in front of her) when the doctor arrives, the Huntsman behind him looking very amused at the two women glaring at each other on the floor.

"I will receive you in my quarters," Regina says, and she somehow gathers herself and rises while Emma watches her dark gown darken further as the glass draws more blood. She tosses a single scathing glance backward before she leaves, and Emma glowers back. "_You_, I will deal with tomorrow. Take her back to her quarters, Huntsman."

The doors to the library slam closed behind her, and when she voices the one question she still can, the Huntsman has no response.

"_What did I do_?"


	3. Chapter 3

She's still half asleep the next day when the door is flung open and Regina stalks into the room, tossing one last comment to the Huntsman over her shoulder. "She will wake when I command it."

"You're the queen," Emma agrees tiredly, sitting up on her cot and stretching. She'd slept better last night, even if she had spent a good hour staring at the ceiling last night, trying to make whatever had exploded from inside her to work again. "What now?"

Regina stalks closer, her eyes narrowed. "You will address me as _Your Majesty_."

"Right." Emma rubs her face with the balls of her hand, forcing wakefulness. "Um, I'm not really used to the whole royal thing. Sorry." She stops mid-stretch, following the queen's eyes down to her chest. "Please tell me you're not going to try to pull out my heart again."

Regina looks up, surprised. "Certainly not, Miss Swan. The sorcery you wrought had rather…disastrous effects last night." As she speaks, though, her eyes are lowering again, right back to her chest, and Emma is about to say something when she realizes.

This isn't a woman sizing up an opponent. Regina is without a doubt _checking her out_. Her clothes had been washed yesterday while she'd been gone, and she'd worn only a bra and underwear to bed, comfortable in the familiar feel of commercial mass-production that had probably never seen a farm. And now Regina can't seem to tear her eyes away, even as goose bumps break out across Emma's skin at her revelation.

It's not that she's interested in women- that she's really thought about it either way, honestly- but Regina's gaze is possessive and sharp, setting all her nerves on high alert and stimulating a pulse deep in her belly. And this is something she knows how to use when she remembers herself, and she slides out of her bed and straightens, watching the queen give her a subtle once-over before Emma speaks. "I told you, I don't know what happened."

Regina cocks her head, distracted. "What are you wearing? It's indecent."

"_You complaining?"_ Emma bites the words back before she gets in even more trouble, though it seems a bad idea when something far worse escapes. "Like you're one to talk." Privately, she considers the queen's wardrobe proof that magic does exist and she does have a very benevolent fairy godmother, but it seems hypocrisy that she'd criticize Emma's underwear when her own assets are so proudly displayed.

Regina steps closer, and now that she's on the topic Emma can't stop staring at the ample cleavage thrust just under her face. "You will learn to fear me," she hisses, a single finger running down from Emma's neck along the curve of her left breast. Regina's hand settles over grey lace, just about where her heart is thudding, and Emma aches with sudden, furious need. "Tell me how you did it. Who anchored your heart. Was it Rumpelstiltskin? The Blue Fairy?"

"N-" The word dies in her throat as Regina's hand tightens around her breast. She takes a deep breath, tries again. "No."

Regina splays her other palm against Emma's collarbone, her face darkening. "Was it… my mother?"

"No! I didn't even know magic _existed _until I got here!" Emma protests. Regina's hands are warm against skin that feels like it's burning, and when she slides her hand back into Emma to seize her heart again, Emma forgets how breathing works. There's a tug that she feels just as acutely in her core as she does her heart, and then Regina is throwing her backward, turning on her heel and making her way to the door.

"Then you will go see my physician. Perhaps _he _will have better luck," she says. She turns, her face smug and cold. "Put some clothing on. As…entertaining as it is to see you dressed as a common slave, I won't have you seducing my servants."

"Who's seducing anyone?" Emma calls after her. _If anything_… She sinks to her bed, something deep within her throbbing with need, and it's only the sound of the Huntsman's voice outside that prompts her to dress herself.

Once they're walking down dimly lit halls to wherever the doctor holds court, Emma ventures a question. "Do you know why Regina can't-" She makes a motion at her heart. "Not that I'm complaining," she adds hastily, remembering the Huntsman's fate.

He shrugs. "I've never seen her have any trouble before. She usually just pulls-" He yanks at his chest. "-And squeezes to dust."

"Yikes." She's dodged a bullet, even if she has no idea how. And when she thinks about how absurd this is, how she's actually relieved that the evil queen wasn't able to grab her heart and pull it out of her body so she could control or kill her, she has to pause and dissolve into helpless laughter because _damn_, how is this her life now?

The Huntsman waits patiently for the hysteria to fade and Emma to stop gasping out giggles. "I'm sorry," she finally manages. "It's just- this is all very new to me."

"Give it a few more days," the Huntsman says wryly, and he leads the way through a curved doorway to the doctor's…

_Lab_, she wants to say, because this isn't sterile and white like the hospitals at home, nor is it the primitive setup she'd expected to find in a castle. No, there are those psychedelic magical boxes of electricity all over the place and metallic instruments that have no place in fairyland are lying beside metal beds, and when the Huntsman calls out, "Frankenstein!" she thinks it must be a joke before it occurs to her that it's one the Huntsman would never know.

_She crosses worlds and finds new men to do her bidding_. Stories are fairytales in their own twisted ways, after all, and somehow Regina has managed to get her way in other worlds, too. She shudders, remembering old horror movies and people taken apart and patched together into horrible amalgamations, and when the doctor appears in the room, his hands gloved and a neat little knife in one hand, Emma panics.

Rarely has she entertained the thought of fleeing from the queen back into the forest and she doesn't think of it now, either. It's all instinctive, racing from the room, pulling away from the Huntsman as he reaches for her and running away from them at top speed as he calls, "Emma!" after her. She isn't thinking of escaping the castle, just answering to her last survival instincts as they warn her _away, away_ from the doctor who calls himself Dr. Frankenstein and wants to inspect her heart. It's old training from years of learning to defend herself the hard way that has her shove the guard at the entrance when he brandishes a spear, kicking him backward with enough force that he slams into the door he'd tried to block from her.

She's running across the grounds, past a little pond and a clearing where a distant figure is riding a horse, into the woods that she'd come from without regard for whatever paths might be there. The underbrush is hitting her with every fifth step, pulling at her clothes, and it takes a particularly nasty branch that grips her tunic in place before she's finally forced to stop.

_Oh, crap_ is her first thought, Regina's displeasure at her escape her second. If she'd thought Emma was hiding something before, she'd be sure of it now, and when she goes back-

_If _she goes back, Emma amends, eyeing the woods around her speculatively. She won't do much good to Henry as a stone statue or as Regina's slave, and with the luxury of distance, she's beginning to think that this hasn't been her best decision. She barely knows the kid and she's already endured more indignities on his behalf than she'd have ever done to be around a kid she _does _know. She'd given birth to him, but that bond is a chain here, promising a life as an evil queen's punching bag (and wow, that idea should not send a thrill through her, _really_) and nothing else.

She might not have much to live for, but it's always been in her plans to _live_, period, and that seems unlikely here.

Gritting her teeth, she yanks herself free of the branch and squints around the woods, making her way toward the biggest gap between trees that faces away from the castle.

* * *

It had only taken a half hour to get into the town with Henry, but now it's been four hours of nothing but trees and Emma is ready to admit that she might be lost. She sits on a felled branch in a little clearing, her legs aching and hunger gnawing at her.

She'd last eaten yesterday in the early evening, trailing after the Huntsman as he'd led her into the back door of the kitchens and made himself at home at the table while a serving girl flirted shamelessly with him and made snide comments about Emma shoveling her food in with about as much grace as the Huntsman had been, too. This morning they'd gone straight to the doctor without breakfast and Emma's feeling it now after hiking through these woods- and how big is this little town in the middle of nowhere, anyway? Or is she going in circles?

"Well, it's far bigger than it seems," a voice says from just above her left ear, and she jumps, spinning around to hit whoever's behind her. She punches air, and there's a high-pitched, manic giggle from somewhere behind her.

She turns again. A man stands in the center of the clearing, his skin aged and wrinkled and his hair matted into a stringy halo around his face. He's grinning, an arm of his gaudy outfit extended in greeting. "Emma Swan," he chirps.

She's beyond being impressed at people knowing her name here, and instead smiles without humor, folding her arms in front of her. "Let me guess. You must be…Rumpelstiltskin."

"The queen has mentioned me!" He cackles again, wild and amused.

Emma raises an eyebrow. "Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I don't think she's a fan."

Rumpelstiltskin clasps a hand to his heart. "I'm wounded, truly." He shakes his head, mournful. "And after all I've done for her."

"What have you done for her?" Emma asks, curious.

Rumpelstiltskin smiles enigmatically, turning away. "If you are searching for a way out of these woods, I can show you." She opens her mouth, but he's already extending his hands, flicking them outward. "Follow me, dearie!" he trills, and then he's vanishing again, reappearing a few feet away beyond the clearing.

"The queen won't like this!" she feels honor-bound to call after him. She's already regretful at the thought of the Huntsman and how terrible his punishment must be for letting her go, and she has no desire to force Regina's wrath onto anyone else.

Rumpelstiltskin is suddenly behind her again, whispering into her ear. "I have done many deeds the queen wouldn't like, dearie. And we're all tired of catering to Her Majesty's whims in this cursed forest." His fingers climb up her arm as swiftly as Regina's had climbed down her front earlier that day, but the chill she feels now has nothing to do with latent attraction. "You may be just what we're looking for."

"We," she echoes. "We who?"

But Rumpelstiltskin is gone again, waiting for her at a spot ten feet ahead, and when he taps his lips in warning she doesn't dare ask for more details.

It's another few minutes of following him through the woods before she finally ventures a response. "Look, I don't think I'd be very helpful to anyone, and I've kind of got to focus on keeping myself alive first." She swallows guiltily. "I need to," she says, not sure who she's convincing. "Besides, I'm not coming back."

Rumpelstiltskin's forehead creases under the wrinkles. "But dear little Henry, all alone in the grasp of an evil queen!" He gasps, and she can't tell if it's mocking or just exaggerated. "Dreaming of a white knight to come save him," he whispers in her ear.

She flinches. "He has people here who can help him just as much as I can." She thinks of Snow, who has free reign of the castle and hugs Henry like she cares. "I'm no good to him killed by his mother."

"She won't kill you," Rumpelstiltskin calls from somewhere to her right. She follows his voice to another area where the trees have been cleared away, this one long and winding with a dusty road leading forward and the sound of horses galloping behind them. The path she'd come in on.

"She _can't_," he says, leaning forward, and then he reappears behind her on the path, his hands flung out in warning as a carriage comes to view, the Huntsman seated in the driver's seat and holding the reins.

"This is unfortunate," her guide says, sounding unbothered.

Her eyes narrow, suspicious. "I'll say." She folds her arms again, wondering if she has time to run back into the woods. But the Huntsman is already jumping down, jogging toward her with only a glare to spare for Rumpelstiltskin, and she doubts she can take him by surprise again. The imp hums to himself, winking at Emma as he steps to the side.

"Are you mad?" the Huntsman demands, bending down to bind her legs together. "That was the worst escape attempt I've ever seen," he mutters under his breath. She kicks him once before she's frozen in place, Regina extending a lazy finger as she dismounts from the carriage.

"I wasn't going to stand around and get cut open by a mad scientist!" she says hotly, straining against the magic holding her still.

It lets her go in the next minute, and she nearly falls over before the Huntsman steadies her.

Regina strides over to them and seizes Emma by the chin, fingers pressing painfully against her teeth. "Did you think you could flee from me?" she demands, her words hot and furious against Emma's face. "You are _mine_. Not his pawn to play with!"

When Rumpelstiltskin speaks, it's with cloying obeisance that makes Regina's lips press together until they turn white. "I was only lending a hand to a damsel in distress, Your Majesty." He bows, all sweeping grandeur and mocking eyes. "I had no idea that she was a runaway of yours."

Regina draws herself together, letting go of Emma to stalk over to Rumpelstiltskin. "I will find out what you're up to, Rumpel. And when I tire of you, I will destroy you." It's all bluster and even Emma can tell, knowing what little she does of Regina's mistrust and wariness when it comes to Rumpelstiltskin.

He rocks back and forth for a moment, clasping his hands together. "Always so delightful, Your Majesty." He vanishes, reappearing at the edge of the woods. "Oh, and Your Majesty?" He bows again, his eyes on Emma's again. "I would ever despair if any harm came to the fair Emma Swan. I've grown so …fond of her in our time together."

Regina's lip curls in disgust. "I'll let you know when anything you say matters to me." She yanks Emma to her by the arm, and Emma is pulled forward, her legs tangling in the Huntsman's bonds around them and slipping out from under her.

Before she can fall, Rumpelstiltskin is there, catching her in his arms as though mid-waltz. He presses a cautioning finger to her lips in reminder and her skin crawls, and then Regina is there again and Rumpelstiltskin is gone, far beyond the woods that surround them.

"That bastard," Regina mutters, her fury dissipated and replaced with something dark and almost fearful. And he might have saved her in the woods and hinted at rebellion, but Regina's dread is enough to put Emma on edge when it comes to Rumpelstiltskin.

Regina grips her harder than is probably necessary, but she's also careful of her bonds on the way to the carriage and patient when Emma stumbles. She doesn't say anything until they're halfway to where the horses are waiting, and Emma's focusing on the rope around her ankles when she hears her irritated voice. "I told you to wait inside the carriage."

"I waited until Rumpelstiltskin was gone!" Henry protests, and Emma's head snaps up to see the boy running across the road, grinning. "Emma!" he says, throwing his arms around her waist, and Emma musses his hair and stares down at his glowing face, wondering how she could have planned to leave this boy to his mother.

When she looks up, Regina's eyes are very soft as she regards her son's smile and there's no evil queen for a moment, just a woman who loves her son. "I was so scared," Henry says, looking up at them both. "Did he hurt you?"

"No," Emma's quick to assure him. "He really was just…helping me find the path back to the castle," she lies. "I got kind of freaked out by Dr. Frankenstein and got lost."

Regina looks at her oddly. "What was his price?"

"Price?"

"For leading you through the woods."

"Oh." Emma shrugs. "He just offered."

Regina's hand tightens on her arm, and even Henry lets go of her, looking troubled through his smile. "Did he?"

"Rumpelstiltskin always asks for something in return," Henry says. "Are you sure he didn't trick you into saying something? Or giving him something?"

"Pretty sure." Emma considers. "Aside from the fact that no one's ever taught him about personal space, he seemed pretty okay."

Henry opens his mouth to respond, but Regina cuts him off. "Henry, back into the carriage. Miss Swan and I will be there in a minute."

"But Mother!" There's a full-scale whine coming but Regina holds up a warning finger before Henry can say anything else. He stops, sighing the heavy sigh of a child exasperated with his mother, but he does run to the carriage and sit on the step, waiting for them.

"So you are Rumpelstiltskin's lackey," Regina says, staring at her. "I can't say I'm surprised, though he's done a terrible job with you. You can't even escape my castle successfully without getting lost."

Why is it so often in conversations with Regina that she feels the need to choose between correcting a falsehood or retorting against a slight? "I'm either the most unconvincing spy he's ever had, or I just happened to be at the right place at the right time," Emma points out. "Come on, which one is more believable?"

Regina shakes her head. "Or he has a plan for you and you just don't know it yet." She pauses, eyeing Emma appraisingly. "It would explain the heart. I should throw you in the dungeons where you belong."

But she doesn't, and that's the part of the day that has Emma struggling most. She endures a carriage ride with the queen's hand splayed possessively over her thigh and Henry bubbling with a thousand things to tell her in the past two days (_"I rode that horse yesterday! See? That one over by the stable! And Snow taught me about royal dinners because I get to go to my first one soon now that I'm ten and I saw a picture page about tigers on the Internet and Mother says that I can learn archery if I don't talk about seeing you anymore-" _and then he stops and looks at his mother, shamefaced, but Regina is staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts) and when they get back, Henry hugs her and then his mother, who stares at him as though he's a ghost, and he babbles about getting her something to eat and runs off with a smiling Snow.

For those few minutes, Emma can almost lose herself in this castle that's full of smiles and love and a cheerful little boy, can see herself enjoying her stay here and can imagine an upbringing for Henry that hadn't been all people turned to stone and doctors fond of body parts. Then she's being escorted to her room by the Huntsman and Regina is breaking out of her Henry-induced stupor to inform her that whatever food Henry picks out will be brought to her room instead, where she can spend the rest of the evening. And she's left in her dismal room an hour later, picking through the feast that a serving girl brings her and laughing a little at the overabundance of candy in Henry's selection when the door opens and Regina returns.

"You will come to breakfast tomorrow," she informs her. "Henry and I dine an hour after dawn, and we expect to see you there."

"Well, that's an upgrade," Emma says, bemused at this turn of events.

Regina pauses. "Yes, well…it would please Henry." She leans forward. "Do not think that this is me, cowed by the wishes of a ten-year-old."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Emma says agreeably.

Regina smiles, lips thin and eyes unpleasant. "He doesn't know you, Miss Swan. You're just an idea to him now. And the more he sees of you, the less he will respect a nobody lawbreaker from a land without magic with nothing to show for her years without him but a troubled past and a prison sentence." She inclines her head. "Who am I to disabuse him of his fanciful notions when you can do it so efficiently on your own?"

Emma's eyes narrow, the burn stinging and the challenge accepted. "So I'm not some ideal mom that he was looking for. I can't exactly give you points for that one, either. And what will you do to me if he decides that I'm pretty cool? Kill me to teach him-?" She stops, realizing that it may not be the best plan to give an evil queen ideas in that regard.

Regina waves a hand dismissively. "Body temperature has nothing to do with this. Though I will have some more…appropriate clothing sent to you." She frowns at Emma's tunic and pants. "You gave birth to a prince and I will have you dress like it."

"I could always just show up in my underwear," Emma mumbles, watching the queen turn away.

Regina stops in place, a cold smile spreading across her face. "It would be a step up from _that_," she acknowledges. "Sleep well, Miss Swan." She glides from the room, her dress moving against her body with every step, and Emma can't stop staring at the sway of her hips under glossy material as the door closes behind her.

A servant delivers her clothing half an hour later, and she waits until he's gone before she looks through it and finds the corset.


	4. Chapter 4

She can't stop staring down.

One time, when she'd been ten- eleven, maybe?- she'd been in a school with a mandatory production that her whole class had been required to join, regardless of whether or not they were foster children with parents who weren't interested in buying them the fancy dresses that the story demanded. She'd stood there in a little blue paisley dress, feeling more like Laura Ingalls than Cinderella, and watched the other girls in the class compare gowns and spin until the material floated around them, real fairytale princesses.

She'd long since been on her own and discovered the joys of the little black dress or a pair of blue jeans, but there's still a certain magic to princess gowns that she can't resist, even as she feels naked and unprotected by the restrictive layers of fabric that clings to her legs and the corset that a servant had fastened so tightly she can barely breathe. Still, she feels regal in her getup, graceful and-

"Would you stop tripping into me?" the Huntsman complains as her shoe traps the front of the gown and she topples forward again.

Well, it isn't like it's _magical_. She leans on his arm, straightening herself out. "Come on, I'm sure you get women falling into your arms all the time," she says teasingly, grinning at the way he blinks down at her corset and then looks away just as swiftly.

He rolls his eyes, pausing by the door to the dining hall. "Don't let the queen hear that or she'll execute every maid in the castle."

"Really now, my Huntsman." Regina's voice is smooth and polished with all the assurances of power as she calls out to them from inside the room. "I am entirely confident of your devotion to me."

Emma pulls the door open, and Regina crooks a finger from her seat at the table. The Huntsman walks to her and Emma stands in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, as he bends to kiss his queen.

She can't help but notice how Regina kisses, the way her lips close over his with arrogant possession, the way her cheeks hollow out over fine cheekbones and her hand presses against the nape of the Huntsman's neck to deepen the embrace. And then it's over in a moment, the Huntsman retreating past Emma and Regina's eyes on Emma's, her lips curved in a smile that holds no humor.

Henry is staring at his plate, and Emma gets the distinct impression that this performance was all for her, a quiet reminder from the woman who holds her guard captive.

"Good morning," she ventures, tripping only a little as she makes her way to her seat. The table looks like the kind you'd see in a boardroom, long and sparse in a way that defies dust or any imperfections. Henry is seated beside his mother, who is naturally at the head of the table. A third plate is set at the opposite head, distant from mother and son.

_So that's how this is going to be._ Regina is definitely smirking when she nearly falls into her seat, the dress catching the side of her chair as she does. Henry remains oblivious. "Emma! I didn't know you were coming to breakfast!" He beams, sliding his plate down to the middle of the table.

"Henry!" Regina snaps, but the kid is already sitting back down halfway to Emma, chattering about his morning plans, and Emma raises her eyes to catch Regina's, unable to resist a smirk of her own.

This isn't a competition- and it isn't one that she can win, nor does she know what she'd do if she did win it. But she can't deny the warmth that comes with Henry's smiles, or the rush of victory at the way Regina's lips thin around the fork in her mouth. _Do you really love him, or is he just another prize to be kept?_ She'd been so sure yesterday, when Regina had held her son in her arms as though he meant the world to her, but her visit later that night had left Emma suspicious again of the evil queen's motives.

What kind of mother wants him to be hurt, the way Emma's certain he will once she disappoints him?

And Emma knows that she _will _disappoint him, knows that with all the certitude of the girl who'd grown up consistently disappointed in all the adults around her until she'd lost all faith in others. She doesn't trust people with the same earnestness that a little boy in medieval clothing can trust a mother he's never met, and she aches with the knowledge that Regina intends that she be the one to crush Henry for good.

The woman sitting across the table from her, her eyes running over Emma's body now like she owns it- she's _evil_, and the veneer of magic that lends a fantastical air to everything that she does can't mitigate that anymore. This is the woman who had entombed Snow's prince and a dozen tourists, who still holds the Huntsman prisoner, who reigns over a kingdom that Emma has barely had chance to see but knows better than to believe it's with compassion and goodness. Regina might care about Henry, but she isn't above putting her own needs first, and Emma is suddenly determined that Henry will never suffer from her again.

"-And I'm going horseback riding again today and Snow said I could ask you to come too!" Henry is saying.

And it's partially concern for him and partially because of the stricken look on Regina's face that Emma says immediately, "Of course I will," before Regina can object.

And she knows instinctively that Regina, for all her bluster and machinations, won't refuse Henry while he's smiling with such open enthusiasm.

* * *

The stables are to the right of the castle, well kept with plenty of space for running. Henry races ahead as they descend to the fields, shouting back to her about the horse she'll be riding, and Emma pulls her dress a little higher and shudders at the thought of riding for the first time like this.

"Don't worry, you can always tell him you don't want to," Snow says by way of greeting outside the stables. She's smiling, welcoming and kind, but Emma can see the worry on even her face when she trips over the hem of her gown and falls against the outer wall of the stable. "Ladies are meant to be skilled at riding but never display it in public."

Emma arches an eyebrow. "If the dress didn't tip you off yet, I'm not much of a lady."

"No," Snow agrees, her lips pursing a bit with every passing moment. "Where's the clothing I sent you?"

"Regina," Emma announces, pulling herself up again. Henry is calling out into the stable, and a man emerges, lurching from side to side as unsteadily as Emma as he leads a horse with him. "_Requested _that I not change out of this outfit around Henry."

_"I will not have my son escorted by a woman with no propriety," Regina had snapped when Henry suggested otherwise, eyes flashing. It had been the only thing she'd said during the meal after Henry had invited Emma along, and they'd both obeyed without question._

Now, Snow sighs. "Of course she did."

"But if he's riding with that guy, I should be on equal footing, right?" Emma gestures to the man, who's passed the reins to Henry already and is stumbling back into the stables with lumbering, confused steps.

"Daniel doesn't ride." Henry walks over to them, a docile pony following. "He just takes care of the horses."

"Is he okay? He looks kind of…" She considers. "Kind of like me, but without the dress," she admits, shamefaced.

Henry shrugs. "I don't know. He's always been like that. He likes the stables and the horses so I guess Mother just lets him stay out here. I've never really thought about it."

They both look to Snow for explanation, but she's uncharacteristically silent, her eyes dark and uncertain. "It isn't my place to say," she says tightly.

"Snow-"

"_It isn't my place_!" The words burst from the woman as if they're an oath, a dirty phrase she keeps constrained to her mind for fear of what might happen with exposure. Emma stares, taken aback by the vehemence, and Snow stares determinedly at the ground.

"Mother." Henry says it with certainty, stepping forward to touch a hand to Snow's arm. "What did she do to you? To _him_?"

When Snow raises her face to his again, it's a different face than Emma's ever seen, tired and pained and so very _old_. "She did nothing," she says, and Emma doesn't believe it for an instant.

But Snow doesn't want to expand on it, not even when the Huntsman arrives from a far field and has Daniel bring them each a horse. Daniel stumbles again as he passes the reins to Emma, something not quite right about his face, and Emma shudders.

The Huntsman saddles her horse for her, smirking at her face. "Don't worry, it hasn't rained in days. The chances of you falling in wet mud are much less than you falling on hard grass and breaking a leg."

"You're always a pleasure." She follows Snow's lead and manages to mount the horse on her second try, her gown riding up to her knees as she does. The Huntsman eyes her legs appreciatively before he swings onto his own horse and rides over to Henry.

"What now?" she asks Snow.

Snow is staring at her, her lips quivering with repressed emotion that's nothing like the intensity of her reaction to Daniel. "Is this… is this your first time riding a horse?"

"If I ever figure it out."

"I'll help you." And Snow's eyes are shining with tears as she shows Emma how to encourage her steed on and direct it from side to side. Snow's a born teacher, talking to Emma as though she's a child without hitting the line between helpfulness and condescension, and Emma finds that she's eager to show her what she learns as she steers her steed around the field. There's a sort of rush to riding a horse, even as slowly as she's going, the sturdiness of the mount like no vehicle she's ever ridden, and she's surprised to realize that she's enjoying herself.

"Wow, Emma!" Henry's pony is moving at a quick trot now and he and the Huntsman are riding around them in a wide circle. "You're really getting the hang of this!"

She turns to respond and tumbles to the ground face-first, landing on her stomach. All the air is punched out of her in an instant, her ribs sore if not broken. "Thanks!" she calls out in a tiny voice.

The Huntsman is helping her up, holding back a smile that still leaks through. "I wasn't giving you advice, you know."

"Oh, shut up." She scowls at him halfheartedly and climbs on the horse again, her sore muscles protesting the thump as she hits the saddle. She's stubborn enough not to give up the first time she falls, especially when even Henry is looking so pitying at her fall.

For all his bravado, the Huntsman rides beside her for the next few rounds while Snow takes off to follow Henry, and soon Emma's feeling confident enough to catch up to the others.

They're speaking in low voices as she approaches, the tones of co-conspirators. "-knight always rides a horse!" Henry is saying. "It's in all the stories!"

Snow shakes her head. "We have to do this at her pace. We don't want to frighten her off."

"It'll take more than a fall to scare me," Emma tells them, unable to stop her lips from twitching when Snow startles on her own horse.

"Emma! You're here!" Henry is a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar, eyes wide and cheeks just a bit too red to be innocent. "Uh…how long have you been here?"

"Henry!" Snow reproves. She smiles at Emma, quick and sincere. "He cares about you," she murmurs. "And he knows you're trying."

Emma smiles back, her eyes moving to Henry again. If Regina's big plan is to embarrass her in front of Henry, even Emma happily providing her with material doesn't seem like it's enough to scare off the kid. He's grinning at her successes now, excusing her failures, and Emma shivers with the responsibility of his unconditional faith.

She isn't built to be a role model, and she's certainly not built to be a mother. Regina knows it, Snow seems to know it- but little Henry is still glowing with her every accomplishment, thrilled with every step she takes at becoming someone a prince could respect. _I'll never meet your standards_, she wants to warn him, before she lets him down. _I'm never going to be what you need._

It's Snow who distracts her from her doubts, resting a hand on her back in intuitive comfort. "You're doing great," she says, and for a moment, staring into the eyes of someone else who inexplicably believes in her, Emma can believe it.

* * *

They break for lunch after another hour and sit in a nearby field while the Huntsman goes out to fetch a serving maid with food. "After we eat, I go to the library for lessons," Henry tells her. "I guess if the Huntsman isn't supposed to guard you today, you can come too?" He looks to Snow pleadingly, and when she nods in amused acquiescence he jumps up and pumps his fist, "Yes!" and jogs off to share the news with the Huntsman.

"He learned that from the Internet, huh?" Emma suspects that there isn't much fist-pumping in magic kingdoms, especially for a little boy who doesn't seem to have any peers his age.

"Does he have any friends?" she asks, once Snow is done describing the site she's found detailing hand gestures for spies (that sounds a lot more like Universal Sign Language, but Emma doesn't have the heart to clarify).

"Friends?" Snow blinks. "Well, I think he counts me as a friend, and there are the boys who are designated to serve him." She frowns. "It's hard, though. We're all frozen in time, but Henry's from the outside, and any friends he finds are outgrown as quickly as he makes them."

"The curse." Emma hadn't thought about that. "So he's going to keep growing until he's older than Regina herself?"

Snow shrugs her shoulders, troubled. "The other boys don't talk to him much, not after the queen heard one teasing him and dismissed the boy from the palace. And there was that incident with Gretel-"

"Like…Bread Crumbs Girl?"

"What?"

"Never mind." Emma shakes her head. "What happened to her?"

"He found her sneaking into the palace kitchens to steal food, and you know how kindhearted Henry is. He tried to help her." A little red bird lands on Snow's finger, warbling, and she strokes it with a finger. "She was a part of the resistance on the outside."

"Resistance?" Emma had heard hinting from Rumpelstiltskin, but nothing concrete, not until now as Snow speaks so frankly about it.

Snow raises her hand and the bird flutters off toward the woods in the distance, and if Emma squints she can see someone dressed in red at the edge of the forest receive it. "Not everyone wanted to wait for the Savior." As they both watch, the red-cloaked figure vanishes back into the woods. "Gretel had been sent to gain the prince's friendship. When Regina found her…" Her voice trails off as Henry returns, flushed from his run and still beaming at the thought of the rest of the day.

"Emma, there's marshmallows in the kitchen! And Selyse said that you can have as many as we want so I told her you wanted a bowlful and I can have some, right? Right?"

Emma pretends to think. "I don't know, Henry, I'm kind of feeling like I'm going to need a bowl of marshmallows to recover from that ride…but _maybe _I could part with a few."

His smile could light a city. "You're the best!"

Selyse isn't nearly as easily fooled as Henry seems to think, and there are two little bowls of marshmallows delivered. Emma watches with a certain level of awe as Henry finishes off the first bowl before falling against her, moaning, "I feel sick, Emma."

"Your mother doesn't want you eating too many sweets," Snow points out gently, but she's smiling at him as he flops to the ground and grabs his canteen. "You don't want to be sick and give up your day with Emma, do you?"

He pops up in an instant, innocent and bright-eyed. "Who's sick?"

Emma pokes him. "Good kid."

The Huntsman doesn't come back and Emma takes that as tacit acknowledgement that today is hers with Henry as they finish up their food and start tramping back to the castle.

She's happy- really happy around him, more than she'd have ever expected from a kid who'd been raised in an alien world. He's sweet and loving and maybe a little more spoiled than she had ever been, even with a literal witch as a mother, but all it's done is made him vulnerable to hurt and sensitive to what his mother is. She craves to protect him from the world, longs to keep his precious smiles so earnest, and knows all the same that it can't last forever, not when her détente with Regina hangs barely by a thread.

_Or maybe less_. Because there Regina is, standing outside the stables waiting for them, her face drawn and her hands toying with the waist of her dress. Discomfort isn't an emotion Emma would have ever before associated with the queen who rules her kingdom without ever wavering, but Regina is uncomfortable here, enough that she can't hide it.

"Mother never comes to the stables." Henry's face is creased with worry, a counterpoint to Snow, who's just as pale as Regina right now. "She never even rides on her own. Do you think something happened?"

They're still a good fifty feet from the stables when Regina straightens, a decision apparently made, and turns and vanishes into the enclosed stables.

"No!" Henry and Snow are shouting in unison, and Emma starts running, more out of years of self-training than any worry of her own. Henry's voice follows her as she races forward. "Daniel doesn't like people to go in the stable! What if he-"

She ducks into the room, dark and dusty and stinking of horses and death, and freezes.

Daniel had struck her as a little _off_ in the kind of way that Rumpelstiltskin had, something magical warped into him and changing him from human to just-nearly-human. But he'd been gentle with the horses, if a little awkward, and she'd filed him away as odd but not threatening.

But Regina is backed against a wall, Daniel's hands wrapped around her throat, manic murder animating his empty eyes. She's choking out broken words to him- words Emma realizes a moment later are his name, over and over again- and the queen, master of magic that Emma can't comprehend, is standing helpless in his grasp.

"Regina!" It's enough to distract Regina for a moment but not Daniel, whose fingers tighten around Regina's throat as she chokes out an unintelligible warning to Emma.

Emma grits her teeth, seeing no option, and barrels into him, slashing down on his wrists with a decisive blow. Daniel lets go for an instant, howling like an injured animal, and Emma shoves Regina to the side just as he attacks again, throwing her against the wall hard enough that she sees stars.

Daniel is at her throat now, choking her in Regina's place, and she hears Henry as though from a distance crying, "_Do something, Mother!" _and Snow shouting, "_Henry, no!" _and it's all a blur of pain and getting hazier as Daniel tightens his grip on her throat. She wants to stop him but all her attacks are reduced to scrabbling at his clothing, her senses dulled by the lack of oxygen getting through to her brain, and she can feel herself sinking to the ground, held up only by Daniel's iron grip.

There's a burst of gold sparks in the air and Daniel lets her go, blinking confusedly. And a moment later Regina is sandwiched between them, her hands firm against the wall above Emma's shoulders and her face twisted with helpless rage and grief as she presses it forward, just over Emma's face.

"Can't you just throw him off with magic?" Emma asks fuzzily, the combination of Daniel's hands on her neck and Regina so close making it harder and harder to think.

Regina's words are strained now as Daniel beats at her back, one heavy hand landing on Regina and then another, as mindless as a machine. "I won't…use magic…on him," she manages. There's real desperation and helplessness in her voice and Emma wonders why she's even here, protecting a woman she despises from someone she clearly can't bear to be around. Regina's eyes are stormy, her body is shaking, but her hands are strong, keeping Emma from Daniel as he punishes her with blow after blow of what must be superhuman strength from the way Regina shudders.

It must have been less time than she'd thought at first but it feels like forever when a spooked horse slams into the side of the stable, distracting Daniel from his attack. The fury in his eyes abates in an instant, replaced by the early emptiness, and he shuffles over to the mare and pats it down until it calms.

Emma finds it in herself to stand upright again, tucking an arm under Regina's arms to support her as they stumble out of the stables together. She doesn't trip over her dress again until they're out in the sun and fresh air again, and it's Regina who catches her before she can fall, arms twisting out to grasp her at her waist and straighten her out.

"You saved my life," she says dumbly. It's all she can think of to say to Regina, who seems so bereft of the rage and hatred that has defined her until now in that moment.

The queen is silent, touching fingers to the already tender bruises on Emma's neck.

It's only Henry, who speaks before Snow can shush him, who can shake her out of her stupor. "Snow said the horse would help," he says, his voice very small. "I didn't know that Daniel would hurt anyone."

The words slice through the silence with painful precision. "Only me, dear." Regina lets go of Emma, her eyes hardening again, her back straight as though she hasn't been inflicted with worse than Emma. "Don't get used to it, Miss Swan. And go see the doctor before those bruises have that damn Rumpelstiltskin start a riot." She shakes her head. "Or…you won't see the doctor, will you?"

"I can take care of her," Snow says quickly. "Henry can study alone today."

Henry is suddenly at Emma's side, an arm tight around her waist. "But I want to help-"

"Not another word." It's Regina's tightest voice, compressed and held within, and Henry lets go of Emma at once. "Snow, get her out of my sight. And yourself too," she adds, but the bite of it is more raw hatred than any of the polished condescension Emma's heard from her before. Snow looks down, the anguish on her own face nearly as strong as it had been on Regina's minutes before.

She turns, regal and composed, and if the material of her dress wasn't designed to reveal half her back, they might have never seen the purplish marks against bronzed skin, slashed into her back by Daniel's blows. Henry gasps and whimpers out his mother's name but she doesn't pause, doesn't look back, and never wavers a step.

Only once they're inside, Snow fussing over her and forcing her down into Snow's bed so the other woman can help heal her, Emma finally ventures the question again. "Who was Daniel to Regina?"

Snow spreads a mixture of ground herbs against Emma's bruises. "Her fiancé," she says, and there's a world of sorrow in Regina's stepdaughter's voice as she finally tells the story.


	5. Chapter 5

She's consumed with thoughts of Regina.

They follow her when she wakes up in Snow's bed in the morning, the other woman sleeping soundly beside her; when she sees the fairly decent size of Snow's room and remembers Snow explaining just how much Regina hates her; when she's fetched for breakfast again and Regina doesn't even acknowledge her, even though she's returned to more comfortable clothing. She watches the woman and strains to understand her, to know how the evil queen and the heroic daughter and the loving mother are all reconciled within her.

She craves to see the girl Snow had described more than anything else, to know that she endures even now. For Henry's sake, for the sake of everyone she's gotten to know in this castle, for the sake of the kingdom she's barely seen.

And if pressed, she'd probably admit that it's partially because she thinks she saw that girl yesterday in the desperation and pain in Regina's eyes as she held off a living zombie to save a woman she's made no secret of loathing.

Snow doesn't press her, thankfully, even though she's full of so many questions that it's interrupting Henry's lessons. It seems that her escort is a thing of the past- or that Regina just isn't interested in what she does anymore- and she has full freedom in the castle now, and she explores again, remembering where halls she'd seen only once might be or where the armory is or how to find her way back to her room. She's quickly bored and back to Snow by afternoon to watch Henry practice with a bow and arrow. Snow is a skilled archer, and Henry's getting the hang of it quickly.

She doesn't see Regina again until she's tersely told to stay for dinner, and even when she deliberately drags her place setting over until she's sitting next to Henry, Regina doesn't say a word to her, merely asks Henry about his day. Regina had crossed a self-forged line when she'd exposed so much of herself to Emma that day, Emma suspects, and now she's rebuilding that line with practiced apathy.

Days pass, and Regina still says little to Emma. There are no more threats, no more attempts to take Emma's heart, and Emma finds herself watching Regina with fascination bordering on obsession despite her best efforts.

"Really, Miss Swan, you've moved from flattery to obeisance," Regina remarks one day when Henry's running late and Emma can't stop glancing toward the head of the table. "I liked you better when you were putting up a fight, not ogling." She smirks once, the rest of her expression obscured by the flickering candlelight.

Emma flushes. "You saved my life," she points out, going for the simplest truth. "I'm gonna be confused by that, okay?"

The queen is all skillful maneuvering and regal masks, keeping the girl who'd taken such joy in riding and loved a stable boy and had a mother who'd snatched it all away from her hidden away from Emma's searching eyes. "Much as I'm certain you'd like to ascribe that to my good intentions, I assure you that I was only looking out for my son. He doesn't deserve to watch the woman who gave birth to him strangled to death in a stable, as…gratifying as it might have been for me."

"So you do still want me dead," Emma presses, satisfied when Regina's brow furrows and her lips purse. Not that she's fishing for a reaction. Really.

"I want you gone, Emma Swan. As it doesn't seem that you can feasibly go anywhere, I'll have to settle for having you…" Her voice trails off for a moment, Regina's eyes running over her until Emma feels naked to the bone, stripped down from her tunic to nothing but her heart and mind and too-open face. "-silent in my presence," Regina finishes, almost reluctantly, the final words a caress of what had come previous, silky and meaningless and ever so intimate.

Emma aches to speak in rebellion or glare right back or grab Regina to her right then- her hard body softening and pliant in her arms, her lips burning and her chest heaving and promises she'd never meant to make coming to fruition right then- but then Henry bursts in with a wave of happy chatter that drowns them both and they rock together in the undertow, Regina's eyes still smoldering with unspoken guarantees and Emma's own gaze blazing in response.

It's the most they've said to each other in days and Emma is unsatisfied by what she's seen. For all her seductive promises of what might come, there's nothing real there, not like the Regina Emma had seen at the stables or the one Snow speaks of so regretfully. This Regina is distracting and intriguing and Emma can't deny that wealth of attraction she awakens, but behind the sheen of satin and lace and the curl of her lips, nothing draws Emma in quite like the desperate woman who'd stood between Daniel and Emma and taken a beating for it.

She pushes her chair back and rises, and they both turn to look at her. Regina's expression is cool and Henry's is inquiring, but Emma shrugs at both of them. "I have to go."

She needs a drink.

* * *

She hadn't thought that Regina would let her leave the castle again, but the queen doesn't follow her out and the Huntsman is nowhere to be found as she picks her way along the path, following the road toward the lights in the distance. It's twilight. The sky is darkening and the warm glow of the town ahead flickers in a way that Boston never had, lit by fire and low-lit lamps instead of the cold science of electricity. Still, though, it's a place where people live, and she's never been to a town without a few decent bars.

She'll have to drink this fixation with Regina away. It's damned unhealthy and dangerous, too, flirting on the edge of a precipice with someone who's tucked away her empathy so efficiently. The girl Regina may have loved Daniel and the adult Regina undoubtedly loves Henry, but that's as far as Regina will display human emotion, and she would have no patience for Emma delving further.

_Delving is a bad word_, she decides, her mind wandering places it shouldn't in an instant, and she wraps her arms around herself and quickens her pace toward a bar and oblivion.

The woods are dark on either side of her, parting more as she nears the town lights, and she hears a howl somewhere close by. For the first time, she wonders what else might be lurking in a fairytale world. Dragons, setting fire to the woods? Werewolves hunting their prey? Vampires, looking for a quick fix and delighted to find a woman all alone in the woods? It's like something out of a horror movie, and Emma instinctively tenses, reminding herself that she's more than capable of defending herself.

Still, if she's going to do this again, she'd better have a sword handy from here on out.

She walks on, her senses prickling at every crack of a branch or distant howl, and it's a surprise and a relief when she hears a girl's voice behind her calling, "Emma? It's Emma, right?"

It should have only been one of the serving girls who'd know her name, but the girl who catches up to her is tall and grinning- without the mark thirty years of endless servitude has left on some of the girls- in her expression. "I'm Red! Snow's friend," she clarifies, and Emma recognizes her- or rather, her red cloak.

"You're the one she was passing messages to that day at the stables!" she realizes. Snow talks to birds and they seem to talk back some times, and take little rolled up notes to people on the outside other times. Regina's restrictions on Snow seem as harsh as the ones on Emma- maybe more so, if it's been three decades of Snow trapped in the castle without her friends and family.

Red bobs her head in acknowledgement. "She said that you were being held prisoner there, too. Are you really Henry's mother?"

"Regina is Henry's mother," Emma corrects her. "I'm… just the woman who gave birth to him." It's how Regina refers to her, with all the scorn of her son's circumstances of birth attached, but she feels power in it just as acutely, in the recognition of blood and connection there that can't be denied.

"Wow." Red seems impressed, all youthful enthusiasm and earnest interest, and Emma can see why kind and motherly Snow would take so well to her. "So…the queen let you go?"

"Apparently."

"Are you going to run away?"

Emma stops walking. She hadn't even thought of it, though it had been foremost on her mind a week before. But now there's Henry to think of, his trust in her growing every day. And there's Snow who's become the friend she's never wanted or expected. She's cultivated a taste for being alone, but her heart hurts at the thought of leaving them both to find that same realization while they languish, dreaming of their savior who might never come to set them free.

And there's Regina, whose eyes spark with cool fire and whose lips whisper quiet threats and whose heart has been laid bare before her once and made an addict out of her. She swallows. "No, I don't think so. Not now."

She'll have other chances, if she needs to leave. She'll have to.

Red escorts her through the town, pointing out sites that Emma loses track of quickly. "There's where the farmers live, and that's Gepetto's shop, and back there is the fairies' domain, now that their magic is gone." There's a flicker of light in the direction Red's gesturing toward, dim and suppressed.

"Did Regina take it from them, too?" Emma asks, curious. Rumpelstiltskin hadn't seemed affected by Regina, but perhaps she'd been too afraid of him to enchant him like she had the rest of the town.

Red shakes her head. "This world is weaker in magic. I also have more control over my-" She stops, frowning. "Um. Anyway, they still have a little power, but the fairy dust isn't as strong anymore, I guess. Here's the tavern!" She announces, stopping in front of a pathway winding up to a well-lit building. "Granny runs it, but I have a shift tonight."

Inside, the tavern is loud and boisterous, men and the odd woman gathered at tables eating and drinking and shouting good-naturedly across the room at each other. Red is quickly distracted by clamors for more drinks, and she manages to set a pitcher of ale down in front of Emma before she bids her farewell.

Emma sips her drink, wincing at the taste. It's sweeter than the beer she's used to, but it'll do. The people around her sound louder and more distant with every sip, and she lets herself tune them out, thinking instead of the little boy she'd left behind with his queen.

She's always been able to hold her liquor but there must be some magical element to this ale, bringing on the first stages of intoxication faster than she'd expected, and she jumps when another pitcher slams down on the table beside her. "I've never seen you before," a little man announces, and then there are a few more crowding behind him, eyeing her through bleary eyes.

"I've been in the castle," Emma says neutrally.

"Sure don't look like a serving wench," someone retorts from behind her. It's another little man, short and bearded with suspicious eyes. "Fine clothes for a serving wench. You're one of _hers_, aren't you?"

"Here to watch us and report to the queen," another…_dwarf, are these dwarves?_ says. Emma tries to count them, but the ones in front of her keep splitting and reforming. There are either four or eleven, she thinks.

Two identical dwarves lift their drinks to their lips in unison. "Haven't you done enough?" they say together, blurring back into one dwarf to Emma's dizzy eyes. "Damn queen."

"Damn queen!" all the dwarves chorus, raising their glasses and clinking them together.

The suspicious dwarf glares at her again. "Won't curse the queen, either? How deep are you in her pocket?"

"Not deep enough," Emma mumbles. The dwarves stare, and she raises her glass half-heartedly. "Yeah, yeah, damn Regina."

The dwarf's lip curls. "Don't tell me you're one of those _savior lovers_." He sneers, slamming his glass on the table with enough force that it shatters, startling the rest of the tavern to silence. A thin train of blood runs down his fist. "She's not coming! She's never coming!"

There's a low murmur at that, dark and angry. "Shut your mouth," Red snaps from behind the bar. "The savior will come."

"The twenty-eighth year has started already!" someone else shoots back from the other corner of the room. "Where's the savior now?"

"Yeah!" There's a chorus of agreement, and Red stares down at the pitcher she's filling, her eyes hard and defiant.

"Have faith," an older man calls out, and the dwarf beside Emma snorts loudly.

"Faith?" he echoes. "Faith in a myth? The savior is dead. And it's time we fought back, before that damned queen and her bastard son destroy even what we have here."

"Hey." Emma thinks to say, as the crowd rumbles and more agreement is shouted out. Regina, the royal witch, their threats growing more and more creative. Snow White, a patsy, who's been too caught up in the new prince's life to care about her people. The fury at the castle is low and at boiling point, tension amped up with the help of ale and Red watching helplessly as the people around her seethe with barely contained violence.

"Royals, caught up in their own little spats and destroying us in the process," another dwarf grumbles.

"Like hell!" It's the suspicious dwarf, suddenly switching sides in the clamor to growl at his friend. "Snow is still on our side. It's that little bastard that the queen has forced her to mother that keeps her prisoner." His words are slurred, pain and alcohol slowing his speech. "If I got my hands on that little brat, I'd-" Out of words, he pantomimes, his hands tightening and squeezing an imaginary neck. "-before he grows up to be a tyrant like his mother."

Emma sees through dazed eyes, her pitcher gone and her mind clouded. Her heart is pounding in her ears as she watches someone punch the dwarf in the chest, throwing him onto the next table, and it's only after a moment that she realizes that it's her fist in front of her, her own hands clenched at the dwarf's words.

Someone else howls in fury and there's another dwarf on her, and now she remembers to throw him back too even as the men at the next table crash into theirs to retaliate. There are shouts of frustration and violence and others join in, backing the dwarves or their neighbors, attacking anyone close enough to touch.

Nearly thirty years of fury and helplessness are powering this fight, and to Emma's still-intoxicated mind, it's all flashes of metal and grunts and purple bruises. She takes a moment to realize that she's being attacked, too, and throws herself into the brawl with all the enthusiasm that inebriation can bring.

"Enough!" Red is shouting, but she's drowned out by a tavern packed with brawlers, breaking glasses and trampling each other in an attempt to destroy _something_, _anything_, and Emma is only thinking of Henry and the way the dwarf had so gleefully promised to snuff out his little life. She kicks and throws herself forward, desperate to defend a son who'd never know what they speak of, outside the castle.

A thunderous bang splits the air, and Emma freezes, recognizing the sound for what it is. Beside Red, an older woman stands bearing a gun, aiming for the ceiling. She fires again, startling the occupants of the tavern for another moment, but it proves ineffective against the mob.

A third bang sounds, but this one's considerably louder, a deafening blow that seems unending, drowning out all the noise in the tavern until even the most fierce fight- between another dwarf and a man with a cloak who looks suspiciously like Dr. Frankenstein under his hood- comes to a standstill. The noise continues, roaring over them all, and slowly, all the brawlers turn to stare at the door.

Framed in the doorway is Regina, her eyes flashing and her magic-soaked hands outstretched, bringing the magic silencing boom to a crescendo before she lets it end. The room is still silent, the dwarves still gaping beside Emma, and Regina's eyes flicker to them for a moment before settling on Emma.

"Miss Swan, I'd like a word," The words are casual, unbothered by the destruction wreaked on the tavern or the drunken fight that had induced it, and Emma swallows and steps forward.

There's a low _traitor! _from one man as she walks by and a _shut up! _a moment later, and Emma glances to see who'd hissed the response and is startled to see that it's the dwarf who'd threatened Henry in the first place. He's glancing from Regina back to Emma, looking troubled.

Emma isn't sure how she looks to them- spy or servant or helpless possession- as she follows Regina out without a word, but it's hard to care all too much, still addled by drink and righteous anger that leaves her unfocused on anything but the regal figure in front of her. She stumbles a bit and is vaguely startled by Regina's arm, straightening her against the queen's side.

"I'm so wasted," she mumbles, half in apology, half explanation. "What the hell does Red put in those drinks?"

"It's their only use for fairy dust these days," Regina sneers, tightening her grip on Emma's waist. "Really, Emma, a bar fight? Is that the sort of example you want to be setting for Henry?"

"They…" The queen must be using her magic to quicken their path, because when Emma blinks they're only a hundred feet from where the castle grounds begin. Or maybe she'd lost track of time, pressed up against Regina like this. "They said…things…about Henry."

Regina stops moving. Emma topples forward, barely noticing when she crashes to the ground. "He'd love them if they let him, wouldn't he? And they'd love him. Not…"

"Yes," Regina agrees, her voice soft. "Yes, they would."

_There you are._ Emma stumbles back to her feet, staring at the eyes of the mournful mother with unabashed interest, subtlety gone with sobriety. This is the Regina she's been looking for, the woman under the queen, and she tips her face forward, wanting to touch her ever closer.

Instead, her head misses its mark and falls forward to drop onto Regina's shoulder. The other woman doesn't move and Emma whispers into her neck, "I found you."

"Who were you looking for?" Regina's tone is strained, her hands settled at Emma's waist again, and Emma sways unconsciously, dancing in time to her heartbeat with the queen as her immobile center.

She remembers to answer only when Regina asks again, the other woman urgent and confused and angry all at once. The magic of the fairy dust wears off as quickly as its onset had come, and she can feel sobriety dawning as they stand together, Regina as dazed by her as she is by Regina.

And maybe her one-word answer is unsatisfactory to sum up the thoughts of the moment, but it feels like it might be enough when "_Regina"_ is all she can respond to the demand.

Her cheeks are aflame, her heart pounding a warning, her mind disorganized and humiliated at the sincerity of her admission, and she pulls away from Regina, running back toward the castle and mentally slapping herself for exposing so much of what she's been craving.

She turns back once, long enough to catch sight of Regina still frozen in place, her eyes narrowed with an emotion Emma can't place and a hand still outstretched ever so slightly where her grip had been settled at Emma's waist.

* * *

_I'm sorry it's been so long! I've been busy with offline things for the past month, but hopefully I'm back on track after this chapter and will keep marching forward! Thanks as always to my stalwart beta Liz and to all of you here who've read and commented! :)_


	6. Chapter 6

She dreams of horses without riders that night, running wild around Regina in a dervish of motion, blocking her from view and protecting and attacking her with every leap forward. She struggles to get through, to reach the queen, but the horses throw her back each time. When she finally makes it to the center, she touches her hand to Regina's outstretched fist for an instant before Regina hurls her back, far past the horses and into painful, painful wakefulness.

Fairy dust might wreak unexpected havoc with her sobriety but it still packs a hell of a punch in the morning, and Emma leans back in her bed, applying pressure to her temples and groaning. She hasn't felt this terrible in months, since the last time she'd surrendered to loneliness and oblivion one Boston night, and the hangover hurts nearly as much as it did when she'd been all alone.

An unfamiliar smell hits her as she opens her eyes, and she has just enough time to scramble across the room to the impossibly anachronistic bathroom (but this is a fairytale kingdom, and she knows better than to question the impossibilities involved) and gag into the toilet. She cups water into her palms and drinks, quelling her raging stomach, and staggers back to the tray by her bed that had set her off.

There's bread and cheese and an odd-looking fish on a plate, a folded note tucked under the glass of water beside it. She downs the cup immediately and groans again at the headache when she swallows. _No more drinking here_, she swears, as though the rest of the night hadn't been warning enough.

She'd made a fool of herself in front of Regina and possibly tried to…_attack her_, her mind supplies, remembering her head dropping instead to rest on the queen's shoulder, and she shivers at the memory of closeness and a spicy scent, heavy and tempting against the smooth curve of her neck. This breakfast must be a warning, the note her punishment, and she opens it as she nibbles on the bread and squints at the words scrawled upon it.

_Bottom level, third corridor. Eight knocks. To destroy her._

_To destroy her. _The words are enough to start her head pounding again. There's only one _her_ that she'd be beckoned to destroy, though the word choice is curious and discomfiting in its harshness.

Her mind wanders, remembering the sprawling bottom floor of the castle and the locked area she'd hit during her explorations. This certainly isn't a message from Regina at all, but one smuggled in by another source, an invitation she tucks away under her pillow for now. The only message here from the queen is breakfast away from her and Henry.

And in that instant of understanding she feels trapped inside the room; the walls claustrophobic, closing in around her, the closed door beckoning, and she starts hammering at it the moment it doesn't open. "Dammit, Regina, let me out!" she shouts, sending new waves of pain to her still delicate head. She's been free in the castle since that first day, even with an escort, and she can't bear the thought of even this elaborate prison narrowed down to only a single room. _Not again, not like it was back then. Not again._ "Regina!" she shouts again.

The door opens. "Would you keep it down?" the Huntsman pokes his head in, annoyed. "If you think Her Majesty can hear you up here, you're even more of a fool than I'd thought."

"Oh. You." The Huntsman is her guard once more, it seems. Well, it could be worse than just an escort.

He enters the room at her unenthusiastic acknowledgment, leaning comfortably against the wall next to the door. "The queen has had you confined to quarters after last night. Don't get excited, I can't take you anywhere."

Ah. So it is worse. "She was mad, huh." Emma hadn't seen her after she'd left her near the castle grounds, just hurried up to her room with the flush of embarrassment and ale still hot on her cheeks and collapsed into bed.

"Livid." The Huntsman shakes his head. "You're really terrible at escaping, aren't you? You make it into town and decide to stay around, and then stagger back to the castle. Do you even want to leave?"

"I wasn't _trying _to leave!" she protests. "Henry's still here, and I'm not going to…" She stops. What can she do here? She can't steal Henry away in the night, safely whisking him off to the real world. Magic and the evil queen that dominates this kingdom aside, she's no mother. And she wonders if Henry would even adjust to the world outside fairy tales, even to be free of a mother he does seem to care for.

When she looks up, the Huntsman is eyeing her dubiously. "You're sacrificing yourself for the boy. How much longer do you think Regina will keep you alive?" But he softens, just a bit, and there's compassion in his gaze. "You do have a good heart," he murmurs.

She thinks of Snow White and just how potent a good heart can be to this Huntsman-turned-hostage, and decides it best to change the tide of the conversation. "Regina actually came to the tavern to get me. So I don't think I'd have made it far anyway, huh?"

"Ha!" It's a full-fledged laugh of surprise from him, an outburst that brightens his face. "Did she? She seemed just as startled as the rest of us when she emerged from her rooms and heard that you'd returned." His eyes gleam with bitter amusement. "She does get protective over her toys."

"Not her toy," Emma tosses back, turning to glance out the window. In the distance, she can see Daniel walking with a horse, his gait unsteady in the lumpy dirt.

"I've seen how she treats you." The Huntsman counters with a shot of his own, flying straight into his intended target. "She may not have your heart, but you're her toy all the same. And one that she's punishing now." He turns to leave, pausing in front of the open door. "You're better off without any of this." His voice is gentle again for the moment, and under his brusqueness Emma hears the plea from someone who understands all too well.

She scowls morosely at his back, wondering how much longer she'll be able to take this. He's wrong. She isn't a toy, to be brought out and delighted over. She's a possession, a prisoner, something Regina will keep until it no longer suits her and Emma is discarded as easily as a lesson for Henry might cost. Emma has been too complacent until now, too readily accepting of both their fates and now, she's forgotten the threat Regina still poses.

She hurts to think of Henry losing anything, to see his earnest affection gone and him hardened as his adoptive mother had once been years before. There's too much of the mother Snow had described in Regina, too much of a need for power and control for her child's own good. And if Regina deems Emma Henry's Daniel, a sacrifice to age him into a hardened monarch, they'll all be lost.

When she stares out the window again, Daniel is gone and the other subjects of her thoughts are walking together in the gardens that surround the castle, Regina gesticulating and Henry absorbed in his thoughts. He looks at her with barely contained resentment, a child scorning his mother for a thousand evils known, and Emma can almost forget her own resentment and wariness at the way Regina reaches to embrace her son and he pulls away, snapping something angrily at her.

It might be self-absorbed to assume that this is about Emma, but her suspicions are confirmed in a moment when Regina raises her gaze unconsciously toward her window and Henry follows, the latter's face lighting up and the former darkening even more. She waves, sheepish, and manages a smile for Henry. He lifts a hand to her, less in greeting than longing. _Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair._

And it's Regina that Emma's watching, Regina who watches Henry as Henry watches Emma and only Emma sees the bare anguish on her rival's face as Henry strains for the prodigal parent over the one beside him.

* * *

"Emma!" The voice comes as a surprise but not an unwelcome one, and Emma jerks out of her musings to smile at Snow.

She's been sitting in darkness for most of the day, pushing terrible thoughts from her mind and smoothing over the mysterious note in her hands a thousand times and watching the shadow of the castle move across the fields beyond it. The Huntsman had brought her a meal at midday but hadn't stayed for long, uncomfortable with her cell just as she is. Not that she can have much sympathy for the one tasked to stand _outside_ her room. "How'd you get past the Huntsman?"

Snow winks. "If anyone asks, he left his position to dissolve a skirmish between some servants downstairs." She sits down beside Emma, lighting the lamp next to her bed. "I think he feels for you."

She can't resent him, either, the prisoner with a cell around his own heart. "Thank him for me when you go, will you? I thought I'd be bored to tears here all day."

She doesn't expand on that, or on just how close she's been to shutting out the world again, like she had once before. But Snow is nothing if not insightful, the gentle spirit who sees much more than Emma had meant to reveal. "You really don't like being locked in, do you?" There's an understanding in her voice, and Emma wonders just what Snow had done in the castle before Henry had needed a tutor.

She hesitates. "I…I wound up in prison once. On the outside." There aren't words to describe what had happened to a seventeen-year-old girl who'd gone from promises of love and freedom to the cold reality of a minimum-security jail cell. And yet words tumble out regardless as Snow sits silently, her face unguarded and her pain for her friend acute upon it.

She remembers the days that had dragged by alone, with the bare minimum of human interaction and the knowledge that all she'd lost was a sham of a future. And then she'd discovered that she was pregnant and there had been weeks of hopelessness in which her cell had become a nightmare, an empty cavern where a thousand dreams were all stamped out by her own realism and she'd known that she would never be suited to mother that child. Where the life growing within her had been a prison of its own in that constant reminder of a baby she was going to doom to a childhood like hers.

"I'd never even thought of adoption, did you know?" she admits. "I'd been just as willing to give Henry up to the foster system because I knew that even that would be better than me."

"Emma…"

"And then the social worker in our prison got a call from someone highly placed on the East Coast interested in my baby, and I'd jumped at the opportunity. I hadn't realized she'd be an evil queen." She smiles without mirth.

"Rumpelstiltskin engineered the whole thing, actually," Snow says softly. "He retained his power as part of the curse and I suppose he thought he owed Regina for it. And he does honor his debts."

Her skin crawls at the mention of the imp, the memories of how he'd looked at her back in the woods still unnerving. "Why me?" she wonders, leaning back against the wall. Her shoulder touches Snow's as it tenses. "Why some random prisoner across the country? That's pretty far to go from Maine."

Snow shrugs, but her face shutters for the first time, her sympathy replaced with something far more cautious. "Maybe it was easier, or he wanted someone far away so there'd be no risk of you coming to our world." She inhales, turning away to stare at the wall. "Or maybe he knew you were special."

Emma laughs. "I'm not special."

"You're…" Snow stops talking and draws in her knees to her chin, closing in on herself as though she's thought better of it. "You've been through so much," she whispers finally. "And you were so alone."

Emma shifts, uncomfortable at the pity in her friend's voice. "Not always. I did okay."

"You came out of it so strong!" And now there are tears in her eyes, and they're making Emma's own eyes water too at the fierce affection in them. "You've endured and you've lost so much and you're here and you're wonderful." Snow's voice breaks on the last word and Emma wraps an arm around her, pulling her close. She comprehends too late why this is a topic that must be just as painful for the other woman.

"You had to give up your daughter."

Snow trembles under her. "I was so _selfish_."

"Don't say that!" Snow had had far better reasons than Emma, far nobler than the self-doubt and fear that had guided Emma every step of the way. Until that child had been in her arms and for a split second she'd wondered- just wondered- if she could raise this fragile creature after all, keep him as her own. She'd been glad after that she'd already signed the papers and couldn't renege on the deal in that moment when anything had seemed possible.

"I was." Snow shakes her head violently. "I thought only about the curse and the savior, breaking it for us all. I thought about losing the girl I'd wanted so dearly, that I'd never thought I'd be able to have. When it all happened too soon, I never considered the life that baby would lead without parents in an alien world." She chokes back a sob. "I never thought about _her_!"

Emma pats her back awkwardly, struggling for something to say beyond platitudes, something that can make this right. She's never felt as guilty about giving Henry up as she has these last few weeks, seeing the world he's become a part of, loving mother- albeit evil queen- or not. Old regrets have swarmed up, old litanies of _if you'd been stronger- better, ready to be a mother- he'd have been happier _reproving her with his every frown, with each moment that had been less than perfect for her surrendered child. "Hey, hey. Look at me." Snow turns to stare at her, her eyes red-bruised with tears. "They found me on the side of the road when I was a newborn. And I turned out okay, right?" She forces a rueful smile onto her face. "If you forget all the stuff I just told you about prison and unplanned pregnancy and the foster system. Your daughter's going to be back someday, I'm sure."

_The savior is dead. The savior is a myth._ The shouts at the tavern had been of faith long gone, fairy tales robbed of their happy endings, but Snow's lips part at her assurance and she lets out a sigh, her tears stilled at last. "She'll save us all," she agrees, and there's so much blind faith in her that Emma almost believes it, too.

The Huntsman is the rude awakening to her growing confidence, later that night. "She clings to happy endings because she knows nothing else," he says when he brings in dinner. There's enough for them both there, Emma notices, and indeed he takes his seat on the single chair in the room to eat with her. "Her story was always meant for that happily ever after."

"And yours was always meant to be the casualty to ensure it." Emma doesn't mean for it to come out quite so frankly, but her words satisfy the Huntsman. She's learning that he craves the same honesty about his situation as he presents to the world, and sympathy isn't quite as well received as the truth is. "And you still don't hate her."

"We're all the queen's victims in the end," the Huntsman reminds her, and Emma remembers the note she'd found with her breakfast, the directions within. If he'd slipped it there when a servant had brought up the food, he hasn't mentioned it all day. And as much as he hates the queen, she knows he's been forced into a loyalty beyond sabotage.

Still, though… "Her, you hate."

The Huntsman shrugs, picking up a piece of chicken and shoving it into his mouth. "Being without your heart doesn't allow for passion like love or hate. I know where the blame falls."

Emma leans forward, her brow furrowing. "Wait, so are you saying that-"

The door opens and they both jerk, staring up at the intruder. "Well," Regina drawls, making her way inside to regard them. "When I'd ordered your food upstairs, Huntsman, I'd only wanted to ensure that you had no reason to leave your guard again. But this is rather cozy." Her lips are smiling but her eyes are hard as flint, flashing at whatever perceived offense they'd engaged in. "Get out."

The Huntsman rises, obedient as ordered, and Regina waves a hand and slams the door shut before he makes it fully through the doorway. Emma can hear his grunt of pain from beyond the room.

She sighs, irritation rising already. "Calm down, Regina, he was just-"

"Do _not _presume to tell me how to reprimand my own servants!" Regina snaps, stepping forward to glare at Emma. She's in every corner of the room, pacing with long, deceptively casual strides as she circles Emma like a cat stalking its prey. "I ordered you confined. Not open for guests, and not distracting _my son _when I'm speaking to him!"

"I don't even think he knew where I was until _you _decided to look for me," Emma counters, taking another step forward. There'd been a time not too long ago when she'd been rightfully afraid of Regina, but her careless imprisonment has galled Emma enough that she doesn't care right now. She wants to strike back at someone, to punish Regina in some way like the other woman has done so easily to her.

Regina's hand flashes out to slap her, but Emma catches her arm, tightening her grip around the muscles in Regina's wrist so the queen's hand can only flail uselessly toward her. "Let go of me," she hisses.

Emma shoves her and Regina stumbles backward, tripping over the chair and toppling down to the ground. "Don't touch me," she manages before the queen is back on her feet, a hand at Emma's throat thrusting her backward onto her bed.

"Allow me to make this clear." Regina looms over her. "You've been given far too much freedom here by virtue of the joy you brought my son, but no longer," she spits out. "You are nothing to me. Do you understand?" She punctuates the statement by tightening her grip on Emma's throat, and Emma kicks her legs out from under her in response. Regina lets go immediately, catching herself before she can crash into Emma. Her hands are splayed out on either side of Emma's torso on the bed, and unwelcome thoughts are flitting back into Emma's mind at their position and Regina's body inches from hers.

"You mean nothing," Regina repeats, her breath hot against Emma's face. The spicy scent is back, as wicked as the queen who wears it, distracting Emma even in her ire. "And if you think there's some second Regina, a kind and benevolent ruler lurking beneath the surface, you're sorely mistaken. I'm no weak soul craving redemption." She laughs cruelly at the thought of it, a hair longer than is natural. "And _you_, Emma Swan…" Her head dips lower, her eyes tracing the curve of Emma's lips with such heat that Emma trembles under her gaze. "You would never be the one to find that fairy tale, even if it did exist. You are nothing to me," she says again, one hand leaving the bed to rest against Emma's cheek in a facsimile of tenderness.

It's perverse and twisted and _wrong_. And Emma's unbearably aroused. She's breathing hard- they both are- and she can feel her face tingling wherever Regina's palm touches it, set burning alive by the nearness of this malicious, evil queen. When she's completely honest with herself, she knows that it isn't the freedom of the grounds or the time with Henry that's made her so complacent. It's the humanity she's been searching for in her son's mother, and it's been her undoing until now.

And she's suddenly certain that it isn't just her who's become overly complacent. "Then why," she whispers as Regina's hand moves from cruelty to tenderness with its prolonged contact. "Are you here now?"

Regina stares at her silently, dipping lower with every moment until Emma's words register. She jerks back as quickly as she'd swept in for the hunt, her lips curling in disgust- with herself or her quarry, Emma doesn't know- and she's gone in a cloud of smoke in the next moment, leaving Emma alone again, slumped over boneless on her bed.


	7. Chapter 7

Neither Snow nor Regina come back, and Emma spends a good amount of time for the next few days staring out the window, hoping for a glimpse of her friend. When Snow and Henry appear at the stables one day, safe and unharmed, she's relieved if a bit disappointed. Her only visitor in days has been the Huntsman, and while he isn't bad company, her tension at being locked in like this is hitting a breaking point, and she wakes up most mornings sweating and terrified that she's imprisoned and pregnant and so, so young once more.

She's had ten years to move on, and it's frightening how easily she can fall back into old patterns, to retreating into herself and watching blankly as the Huntsman wheels in her food and tries to engage her in conversation. She's alone in the world again, no friends, no allies, no one who would care if she were gone.

But when she watches Snow and Henry and sees their tiny, distant faces turn upward together to squint at her window, sees Henry wave when he finally catches glimpse of her, she feels less alone for a precious moment. She's here for Henry and she _needs _to see him, needs to talk to him and touch him and strengthen her resolve to stay, to remind herself how much he's worth it. Henry is her objective. Henry is the connection that can get her through this, just as he did when he was still within her a decade before.

She forces a smile onto her face and waves back, warmth spreading through her as his eyes brighten and he chatters to Snow.

Henry makes this dim place a little brighter, sparks it with a magic that Regina could never touch or corrupt. He should have more than life under the evil queen's thumb. _He should have the world_, she thinks wistfully, smiling at the son she'd given up. Her satisfaction with his place here rises and falls daily now, driven by her dissatisfaction with her own lot, and it's a struggle to separate her desires for herself from her desires for him.

"You seem more energetic today," the Huntsman notes when he brings in dinner that night. Henry's long gone from the stables but she's still caught in the glow that seeing him brings her, and she's cheerier today than she's been in days.

She tosses him a winning smile. "I've decided to smash the window with my tray and jump out. Better dead than bored, right?"

He snorts. "I wouldn't know." He takes her hands and tugs her up until she's standing opposite him, raising her eyebrows at the way he grips her. His hands are nice, though, warm and smooth, and she doesn't pull away. "It won't be much longer."

"Really. And how many other prisoners has the queen let go just 'cause?"

"How many others have her favorite guard stationed at their doors?" he counters. His voice gentles. "She won't hold you forever." He hasn't dropped her hands yet and she can't help but notice that he is attractive, more than she'd thought at first- but then, she'd been kind of distracted by Regina from the start. And there's the accent, which is rather nice, too. He's a good guy, even without a heart, and she's been lonely for long enough- and sexually frustrated for days, since _every encounter with Regina ever_- that he's looking really, really appealing.

There are better ways to pass the time than staring out a window and hoping someone walks past.

She shivers and the Huntsman mistakes it for discomfort, finally dropping her hands. "I can talk to Regina," he suggests. "Convince her that we're all better off having you running free. You don't pose a threat to her and all you're doing locked up is making Henry resent his mother. Which he did fairly well at even without you," he adds, smirking.

He brushes his knuckles against her cheek and she remembers Regina's palm pressed there days ago, taunting and teasing and infinitely tempting.

"She has nothing to worry about with you," the Huntsman says again, his eyes seeking hers. "You're just here to be with Henry."

_Bottom level, third corridor. Eight knocks. To destroy her. _She's been wary until now, doubt brought on by the severe wording and the idea of destroying Henry's mother in any form. And she isn't here to join a coup d'état or threaten a woman who can be vindictive and petty but also loves her son and hasn't killed Emma yet, much as she might want to. Regina isn't her concern and for all her threats hasn't been all that awful, so whoever sent that message won't have her as a pawn or a partner.

"Right." She manages a smile and pushes thoughts of her mysterious note out of her mind.

* * *

They're back the next day, when the Huntsman is gruff and irritable and won't meet her eyes. He's limping slightly and she's sure that Regina didn't take too kindly to his suggestion to free her.

It won't be anytime soon, then, and Emma feels the urgency to see Henry more than ever. She watches him in the garden, playing with a stick like it's an imaginary sword and darting glances in her direction every few minutes. If she could, she'd take him and run now, flee from this prison and worry about how she could possibly take care of him later. This might be his home but it's hard and cruel, Regina more so than even the stone castle that surrounds them, and Henry deserves better than a mother who loves him but hates everything else with the same ardor.

She slumps down onto her bed, and when the Huntsman comes in later to deliver dinner, she glares at him and tells him to send the serving girl in from now on. She doesn't want to see his face anymore, with its pointless promises that will never come to pass.

No, Emma wants a plan.

* * *

A serving girl wheels a cart into the room in the morning, shutting the door behind her and bending down to pour water from her pitcher into a glass. Emma lies in bed, her breathing even and her eyes closed in a semblance of sleeping.

The girl turns and Emma springs, clapping a hand over the girl's mouth and whispering lowly, "Don't scream or I'll kill you." It's an empty threat but the girl doesn't speak, just stands trembling in place and waits. "Take off your clothes."

She doesn't have much time before the Huntsman grows suspicious and she dresses in the serving girl's clothes quickly, tying her hair back and waiting for the door to open again. "I'm sorry," she murmurs to the girl now huddled under her blanket, still shaking with fear. She doesn't want to think what the girl's punishment might be for letting her go, what her escape might do to this girl.

The door opens and Emma hurries out, nodding to the Huntsman and keeping her head down as she passes him. Haste is of the essence, and the Huntsman won't be deceived for long.

And in fact it takes only ten seconds before a frustrated "Emma!" sounds through the hall and she takes off at a run, hearing the Huntsman's heavy footfalls behind her. He's still limping from whatever Regina did to him and she's counting on that to outrun him- that and what the sheer panic of being trapped in that room again is doing to her, urging her on away from her prison at any cost.

_HenryHenryHenryHenry- _It's a chorus in her mind, her sole focus as she darts from hallway to hallway, running down to the second floor where Henry's room is, where she knows he'll be coming down for breakfast soon.

Unless she's already missed breakfast. The sun hadn't been shining into her room earlier quite as obnoxiously as it had back when she'd still been escorted to the meal every morning, and her timing might be more off than she'd thought. Where is Henry? Where is Snow, who can lead her to him and maybe join them in this escape? Her room is on this floor too, back in the corridor behind Emma, but Emma can't afford to go back and lose ground to the Huntsman.

She hasn't thought this through- thought about how to find Henry, about how she'll escape with the Huntsman at her heels- and she falters at the last door in the next corridor, preparing to take a chance and bang on it just as the Huntsman reaches her.

"What's wrong with you?" he hisses, yanking her away by the wrist before she can knock. "You run away to the queen's bedchambers?"

"I thought it was Henry's room!"

He scowls. "Henry's room is there!" He gestures to a door at the other end of the hall, past the balcony that overlooks the main hall, and shakes his head in disbelief. "How can one woman be so impossibly foolish?"

She struggles to yank away her hand but he holds fast, pinning her against the wall too tightly for her to use her knees productively. "Let me go!" she snaps, wriggling in his grasp.

He leans in, close enough that he can whisper in her ear. "Don't you think I would if I could? If I were capable of…" His voice trails off and she stops struggling for long enough to press a hand against his heart.

"There must be a way to get around it. To wiggle past what she's forcing you to do." It's all she can try, her eyes wide and pleading, desperate for something he can't give her no matter how much he might want it. They're both prisoners, bound by the same queen, but his is a far more binding hold.

The Huntsman sighs, and she feels the breath against her entire body as it rises and falls. "I'm sorry, Emma."

They're both still for a moment and Emma tenses, preparing to make another run when the Huntsman pulls away. Without Henry for now, then. She'll hide elsewhere in the castle grounds and grab him once their guard is down. All she needs is to-

The voice cracks through the air, sharp enough to cut through steel, and Emma's heart sinks. "Get your hands off of her."

The Huntsman wrenches himself from his place holding her so quickly that he nearly falls over, and he's crouched on the floor in an instant, knelt before his queen. "Your Majesty," he murmurs, but Regina doesn't look at him. She's scorching Emma with her glare, framed regal and furious in front of her closed door with a pulsing red heart tight in her hand. Never has she looked as murderous as she does now, her eyes raking Emma over with that pure hatred, and Emma is left immobile for a moment, thoughts of escape dead and gone.

And then Regina's squeezing the Huntsman's heart with that same cold fury, clenching and releasing as he doubles over at her feet, and it's so cruel that Emma chokes back her fear and hurls herself at the queen, pinning her against her door and sending the heart flying from her grasp. It hits the floor and the Huntsman screams aloud.

It's just a heart, magic throbbing within it. It's the Huntsman's freedom at last, closer than anyone could have predicted, and Regina is snapping curses at Emma and clawing at her and Emma is holding her back as tightly as she can but the Huntsman is closest, reaching for his heart, struggling to retrieve the only thing Emma knows he's ever craved. He takes it and holds it up to his face, wonder in his eyes, and stumbles back to a standing position, preparing to push it back into his chest.

In another moment, Regina hurls Emma against the opposite wall with a burst of magic and runs at the Huntsman, fingers outstretched.

Emma watches as though in a dream, still woozy from the magic, as the tips of Regina's fingers hit the Huntsman in the neck just as he begins to push in the heart. Something grey and sickening slides across the skin below her fingers, spreading upward and outward in a moment, encasing the Huntsman's chin and lips and nose and hungry eyes, covering his shoulders and arms and chest.

The red glow of the unreturned heart still shines bright beneath the grey stone of his palm.

His legs twitch once before they're gone as well to the stone that his body has become, a statue as still and dead as the ones in the hall below them, and Emma chokes out a "No!" disbelieving, the Huntsman's face smooth and inhuman, his fingers clenched for eternity, his pose bent over his heart forevermore.

Regina pulls her fingers away, pressing them into a fist as she stares at her newest creation, breathing hard.

This…this is what she's known Regina is capable of, what she's been told too many times since she'd gotten here by everyone she's met. This is the Regina who can be an evil queen, who could hurt a man who'd been forced into slavery to her at the mere thought of freedom, who would punish them all on a whim.

This Regina is a monster.

She's back in front of Regina before she can think it through, rage and horror molding together and producing raw adrenaline that has her flattening the other woman against the wall like the Huntsman had done to her just minutes before, desperate to _hurt _her, to _stop _her, to make a difference in this moment and make the evil queen feel pain like she does to everyone around her.

Regina doesn't throw her aside with magic this time. Maybe she's exhausted from the attack on the Huntsman, maybe she just doesn't believe that Emma will do anything to her, but regardless of the reason, she's very still, panting against Emma's grasp, the silk of her dress cool against Emma's thin costume.

"Miss Swan," she says, licking dry lips.

And fury is transformed into something dark and wanting in an instant. "Shut up," Emma snarls, and smashes her lips against Regina's.

It's angry and broken and Emma craves Regina's pain just as acutely as she had before, their lips crashing together with bruising intensity, her hands squeezing Regina's arms with enough force to injure a lesser woman. Regina's lips are startled and unexpectedly soft for only a moment before she's just as hard and angry as Emma, her hands scraping for purchase on her back. Emma has never kissed someone with this kind of loathing behind it, never felt the revulsion that powers them as they move opposite each other, coming to blows with every kiss. It's disgusting and it's awful and she can't stop, pressing closer to Regina, craving more contact until they're practically entwined against the wall as one.

There's a slow buildup within her as Regina takes charge, attacking her with a skillful tongue and tracing her way down along Emma's neck, biting with no concern for the woman keening beneath her. Emma is barely aware of her own voice, too caught up in the sensations twisting her stomach, the aching for friction and the need clawing at her with every motion. Regina tears open her borrowed outfit to trace circles around her breasts with interminable slowness and Emma curses, hating the other woman with every moment unfulfilled.

"Patience, Miss Swan," Regina says silkily, but there's a madness in her voice, a desire begging for release beyond patience. Emma's hands seek it out, ripping at her dress until the fabric splits in the front and she's just as unclothed, and Regina is exposed in all her glory before her. There's no pause for satisfaction or admiration, just desperate hands on a heated body, searching for nothing and everything at once.

Regina's hands tighten against Emma's back and a leg thrusts between Emma's, stopping her in place so she can only scrabble helplessly at the other woman's skin, rising and falling against it frantically. The queen's hand snakes out to shift aside her skirt and press against her for an instant and Emma sobs out a release- quick and sudden and deadly, like a snake in the grass- before Regina even touches her clit.

She's riding the waves of her first orgasm when Regina attacks her in earnest, two fingers crooked deep inside her while a thumb presses swiftly against her already sensitive clitoral area, and this hits her so hard that she feels as though she's been slammed with a sledgehammer. She can't breathe or think or do anything but scream into Regina's quickly descending mouth, her whole body seized up as she comes again, clenched around the other woman's fingers and writhing with pleasure and helpless pain.

She doesn't come down from her high for what feels like forever, her nails digging crescent-shaped bruises into Regina's chest, her legs limp and rubbery and her body aloft only by Regina's firm grasp on her, and when Regina finally lets her go she slides to the floor, still dazed and wordless. She leans against something hard that isn't wall-shaped and it's only then that Emma remembers the Huntsman whose destruction had prompted this all, the prisoner/guard statue that they'd somehow twisted mid-passion to have their heated encounter against.

She inhales a gulping sob as the reality of the moment hits her, the knowledge horrible and damning. _Fuck, what have I done?_ And the worst part of it all is how her body still thrums for the evil queen, still craves Regina with the same need as before, still washes over her whole self with naked wanting.

She raises her eyes.

Regina stares down at her, her face spasming with emotions that Emma knows are mirrored on her own. Disgust. Fury. Desire. She must be appalled with herself, loathing Emma, and when her face settles into a mask of cool disdain, Emma flinches. "Get out of my hall," Regina orders, and gathers up the remains of her dress and retreats into her bedchamber.

Emma remains, half-dressed at the foot of the Huntsman's statue, heartsick and furious. At herself or at Regina, she can't quite say, but there's one thought running through her head now, over and over again. _Something has to change._

She can't be here anymore like this, can't be reduced to this creature spurred by her needs to a poisonous attraction, can't face this castle knowing what she does about its mistress. Whatever integrity she's had until now feels weak and worthless, her desires to make Regina more…_acceptable_ nothing but self-delusion that she can't deny anymore. Something must change, and it isn't just about her own imprisonment anymore. It can't be righted with her escape when so many others might suffer for it.

And then another thought, equally pervasive and now more tempting than ever. _Bottom level, third corridor. Eight knocks. To destroy her._

She drags herself back to her room to change, thankfully encountering no one along the way but an older maid who gapes at her state of undress, shirt torn and baring too much. She isn't going to run, not now, not while Regina is still reigning over this town. Not when Regina still must be _destroyed_, and now that word has never seemed more apropos.

She doesn't search for Henry- doesn't know if she can face him today, after what she's done, after what his mother has done- and she doesn't try to confront Regina again just yet. Her anger is still boiling at the same temperature as her lust and she focuses on the former, letting it direct her path through the castle.

The bottom level. The third corridor, where the Huntsman had once pulled her away from a locked door.

She knocks eight times and the door swings open on its own, revealing a small room with a bed built into the opposite wall. A girl who can't be much older than twenty is stretched out on it. "Hey," Emma tries, wondering if she should come back later. She doesn't know if her resolve would be quite as strong then, if this hate will keep spurring her on much longer or if disgust will win out and she'll flee the castle and her still simmering lust instead.

Fortunately, the girl scrambles up at the sound of her voice, saving her from making the decision. "Oh! You must be Emma," she beams with a softly accented voice.

"That's me," Emma says, guarded. This must be the person who'd sent the message, but Emma's never seen her before, not in the kitchens or around the castle at all.

"Good, we've been waiting for a while!"

"We?"

But the girl is busy, sliding her fingers along the stone wall, gripping onto a nick in the stone and pulling. It slides open, revealing a dark tunnel, and Emma gapes. "Come with me, please," the girl says, and vanishes inside.


	8. Chapter 8

Once, Emma had thought that the bottom level of the castle was like a series of catacombs, spreading out in every direction and tunneling deep under the city. She's surprised to discover that she's right. The walls are lit with a gentle glow, narrow and made of packed dirt that seems so smooth it's almost like…_magic_, she thinks, and balks at the thought of it, the evil queen wielding deadly power to hollow out the underground of the castle. "Long walk," she comments inanely to silence her turmoil again, the fury and revulsion that surges up at the thought of Regina.

"We're going through the woods now," the girl assures her. "The mines have their outer entrance near town, and some of the others aren't as willing to climb through the mines just to have a meeting." She grins. "Me, I'm just happy to be able to move around."

She's very pretty, Emma notes, with an elfin face and a delicacy to how she moves, even dressed in a ragged blue dress that's torn in several places. She wonders if this is her cover, if she's a prisoner or just made to look like one. "What did you say your name was?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" the girl touches the tips of her fingers to her lips, apologetic. "I didn't. I'm Belle."

"Belle," Emma repeats. "Beauty and the Beast Belle?"

"What?"

"Never mind." Are there creatures like the Beast here, or do they not exist in this land outside of time? She hasn't heard of anything quite so fantastical here thus far, but she won't rule anything out in a world that contains Snow White and Dr. Frankenstein and a flock of dwarves.

Belle slows down so that she's walking beside Emma. "The queen locked me up years ago, before the curse."

"I can believe that." There isn't much Emma won't believe about Regina now, how cruel and heartless the woman can be. "Did she have a reason, or was she just feeling cranky that day?"

Belle snickers appreciatively. "I love a man she hates. I suppose that was enough for her."

Emma thinks of the Huntsman, of the way Regina had stood in front of them, eyes flashing and heart in hand, snapping out a command. _Get your hands off of her!_

_Her_, not _him_, and all of Regina's fury is reserved for the Huntsman and his apparent betrayal of whatever their arrangement had been, no matter how little control the Huntsman had had over it. No, Regina doesn't care for those who display affection for people she hates. "What did she do to him?"

"There's nothing she can do to him." And there's a note of pride in her voice. "He's stronger than her."

There are people in this town strongerthan Regina? It doesn't seem likely, not while Regina still holds power over them all with her curse. And as far as Emma knows, she's only ever seemed afraid of-

Emma pauses, stares at the girl, her eyebrows shooting up. "Rumpelstiltskin."

Belle nods, smiling. "He'd thought I was dead for so long, but I was fortunate. My last guard was dismissed from the castle several months ago, and his resentment outweighed his fear of the queen." She furrows her brow, mock-thoughtful. "The way Rumpel tells it, he _might've _been a tiny bit drunk, too. Fairy dust, you know."

"Do I ever," Emma agrees fervently. "He told Rumpel about you? And Rumpel didn't kill Regina right then?" She remembers her skin crawling at his nearness, remembers how all her instincts had screamed that he was dangerous.

But then, her instincts had led her astray before- _had her craving Regina, certain that there was still goodness within her, because it was easy, because it made things easier_-

Belle shakes her head. "He can't enter the castle itself, and Regina is well protected when she leaves it. All he could do was focus on saving me. He hollowed out most of this path, but the dwarves had to do the last bit. And then I was free." She smiles, shaking her head. "Rumpel didn't understand at first, when I said that I wanted to stay in my cell most of the time. But I want to make a difference, and he needs someone in the castle to communicate with our agent there."

"You're the resistance, then," Emma guesses. She'd suspected it all along, of course, but Belle's happy nod is her confirmation, and Emma's relieved to know that someone who pings her internal radar as a genuinely good person is a part of this. Rumpelstiltskin must be the man behind the resistance, and she isn't certain she trusts him any more than she trusts Regina.

Maybe even less so.

They hit the mines at last, and they're dimly lit in the corners and dusty and dank throughout. "This way," Belle urges her on, and Emma follows her through slowly widening pathways that brighten around them with the glint of jewels lit with an otherworldly light, pressed to the walls and partially harvested in places. "Fairy dust," Belle explains, crooking a finger and brushing a wall of jeweled rock with a knuckle. "There isn't much use for it here, especially with so little magic in here, but I think the dwarves like harvesting it anyway." The purple dust trails after her, drawn out of the wall with her touch like the tail of a comet until she pulls her finger away.

Emma presses a hand to the rock, curious, and the wall thrums beneath her palm, fairy dust emerging from the stone near her hand and converging around it. It's all drawn in and she feels dizzy in a way that's stronger than just the spiked alcohol but laden with clarity at the same time, and she draws a euphoric breath and pulls away her hand to stare at it.

It's still glowing with magic, and Belle says, "Wow," and laughs softly, twirling her own finger in the dust that hovers around Emma's hand, climbing up her wrist. It takes another moment of them both staring breathless at the fairy dust before Emma remembers herself, and unsettled, she shakes her hand until the light falls from it in a shower of sparks to the ground.

"Such a waste!" a voice trills, and suddenly Rumpelstiltskin is on a bent knee before her, snatching up the fairy dust before it can fall any further. It jumps to him with the same energy as it had jumped onto her, and he extends a hand, cracked lips splitting into a smile as the dust is absorbed into his skin. "My dear," he nods to Belle, and she takes his hand as he rises, looping an arm under her elbow. "And, of course, the valiant Emma Swan."

"Rumpelstiltskin," Emma acknowledges, trying not to stare at how easily Belle fits against Rumpelstiltskin, how she looks at him with such unfettered adoration. _We all have demons we're drawn to, no matter the warning signs, no matter the knowledge of their true nature._ And can she really judge, when her own demon seems so much worse today?

Rumpelstiltskin smiles again, and it's not unfriendly as much as uncomfortably significant. He can't possibly know what's going through her head, but he winks and nods her on as though he's fully aware, and she brushes past him without looking back, her heart pounding.

Rumpelstiltskin seems unperturbed. "All our players are here today to meet you, Emma Swan." They've reached a large opening in the mines, close enough to the surface that the sunlight glows mutedly from the far end of the room. Rumpelstiltskin waves his hand and candles flare to life from lamps arrayed around the room, and Emma can see that they aren't alone.

There are maybe two dozen people present. A collection of dwarves- the ones she'd seen a week prior at the tavern, and this time she can count them all and deduce that yes, these are the seven dwarves of fairy tale fame. A few scruffy-looking peasants stand near the dwarves, but the other end of the room is occupied with chairs and fine clothing and men and women who delicately keep themselves distant from the others.

One of them speaks, a younger man with cool, unhappy eyes. "He came into our home to fetch us. Our home!" He drapes a protective arm around the heavily pregnant girl beside him.

The blonde woman seated in the chair beside her laughs without mirth. "You make deals with the Dark One, he's never going to stop dropping by." She inclines her head, taking Emma in with a glance. "I would introduce myself, but it seems unwise to grant a stranger of the queen's castle that knowledge."

There's a sour laugh from another corner of the room, and Emma squints to see the man resting casually behind a lamp, his face dark and malicious. "Royals. As though the queen thinks of any of us as a threat." Emma blinks and he's suddenly just behind her, a sudden light breeze on her face the only hint that he'd gotten there without magical means. "You can tell the damn queen that Jefferson is still here," he hisses in her ear, still hovering close enough that Emma's skin is prickling with warning.

"I'm not telling the queen anything," Emma retorts. She twists around to take in the dwarves and the lowly murmuring peasants. "I came here to do what you all want to do- destroy her." The words catch in her throat but she still gets them out, defiant and determined and keeping the humiliation and fury of earlier still brimming at the surface.

"And Emma is indeed close enough to the queen to aid us," Rumpelstiltskin agrees gleefully, clapping his hands together once. The young man with the pregnant girl jumps. "Very close indeed."

"Ha!" It's the suspicious dwarf from the night at the tavern, the one who'd defended Snow and watched her so thoughtfully when Regina had retrieved her. She's been thinking of him as Grumpy since, and it doesn't come as a surprise when the dwarf next to him says his name reprovingly, then sneezes into a handkerchief. "In her bed, you mean," Grumpy snorts, and Emma's cheeks flush red.

"Like hell," she snarls at him, and there's the discomfort at her core again, that disgust/lust that eats at her whenever she thinks of Regina now, stronger than ever at Grumpy's implication. _No._ Not again, never again, and she cringes, wondering if her…altercation earlier that day is that obvious to everyone present. "I would never-" She stops, because there's nothing left to say when she _would_, when the rest of the room is eyeing her now with even more interest than before.

Rumpelstiltskin laughs, a high warble that makes several people squirm uncomfortably, and Emma realizes that these people must be just as desperate as she is, to have thrown their lot in with someone as worrying as Rumpelstiltskin. "That would be to our benefit, dearie, if you choose to pursue it."

"I will not!" She's outraged at the implication, the idea that she would throw herself into bed with Regina to fight this battle, and vaguely nauseous at the thought that she'd done it even without a battle to fight. God, what had she been _thinking_ earlier? How could she have gotten herself into that? Her mind helpfully supplies her with images of Regina's ever-so-inviting dresses, of heavy perfume and those dark-lined lips attacking her neck, and Emma takes a step back, clenching her fists together. _Not again_, she warns herself, and her body responds with a frisson that shivers through her.

"Enough." It's the blonde royal who'd spoken earlier, glaring at Rumpelstiltskin with eyes that take in an estimation of him and find him wanting. "We have another agent in the palace. That is all that matters."

Another royal, this one older and sour-faced, leans back in his finery. "The sooner we take back my kingdom, the better. I don't care how we do it." He scowls. "We've waited far too long for empty promises of saviors and magic. I say we have this woman kill her tonight."

_Oh_. Emma's brow furrows, an unwelcome coldness filling her at the idea of it. But these are royals, probably just as quick to _off-with-their-head!_ as they would be to imprison an enemy. They don't seem to think much of a quick murder.

But then, they don't have a son who'd be left damaged by that. It isn't even Regina's death that horrifies her (though it does send an unwelcome unease to her face, and a memory of Regina's face when it isn't wreathed in hatred), not when she knows what the queen is capable of and how she wouldn't hesitate to kill them all. It's the thought of Henry watching as his birth mother is responsible for the death of the only mother he's really known. It's the thought of killing in general, of crossing that kind of line that she'd never even imagined crossing before, not even in the worst of foster homes when she'd craved escape in any way.

"Don't be ridiculous," the blonde royal responds sharply, her eyes trained on Emma. Emma looks away, tense at the thought of what her hesitation might have revealed. "And we still have a few years before the savior comes. A contingency plan, once the queen is defeated."

"A few years?" one of the peasants finally speaks up. "The savior was supposed to have come four years ago!"

There's a murmur of uncertainty, and one of the dwarves says, "No, the date was only a little while ago."

"It hasn't come yet!" The pregnant girl says, and she seems near tears. "The savior will come. My daughter will be born!"

"Foolish optimism," the older royal grunts, sitting back. "You're counting on the word of Snow White and that shepherd boy?"

"Don't think we haven't forgotten what you've done, King George," Grumpy says darkly, rubbing a palm against his pickaxe in warning.

Jefferson speaks again, close to Emma's ear as the royals argue with the dwarves and the peasants. "This is their alternative. They don't care for magic or the passage of time." He laughs, unpleasant. "They just want to be princes and princesses again for more than playacting for the queen's pup's amusement."

"And the dwarves want vengeance," Belle puts in, and for the first time, her voice is hard. "I do, too."

"Yes," Jefferson agrees. "And the savior can't give us that kind of vengeance. Not for what I owe Regina." He's close to Emma again, his eyes lingering on her in assessment, and she stares him down. There's a kind of tempered madness to him, a desire for blood that shadows his eyes, and if she watches him for too long she can feel herself consumed by the insanity lurking in his gaze.

"And what can I do?" Emma asks, her throat dry. She's determined to destroy Regina, to depose her and imprison her or exile her or whatever happens to the bad guy at the end of the fairy tale. She thinks she might even be okay with seeing Regina rightfully killed, as long as it isn't her hand that does it and therefore traumatizes Henry for life. "Do you need intelligence? To talk to Snow? I can try and arm your people." Without the Huntsman dogging her steps, she thinks it might be easier to help.

It's Rumpelstiltskin who responds, his eyes alight with an amusement he doesn't share with the rest of them. "Oh, you'll know when the time comes, dearie."

"What?" Belle asks, but Emma is distracted by the rest of the resistance, who've moved just as swiftly from their spats to their mutual resentment of their ruler.

"It's the son whom we should be focusing on," King George is saying, standing up and clasping his hands behind his back. "He's our channel to the queen, just like last time."

_Last time?_

One of the peasants laughs a brittle laugh. "And how can we get to him, short of blowing up the castle?"

"You're not getting to him at all!" Emma snaps, taking a step forward.

"Ah, yes." Rumpelstiltskin raises his hands, stretched out to silence the crowd. They fall quiet instantaneously, and Emma can see one or two of them with their mouths still moving but no sound emerging. "Miss Swan here is Prince Henry's birth mother, you know. It affords her access to the castle but she has a vested interest."

"Regina, giving a parent access to her child? Perish the thought," Jefferson murmurs.

"I'll say," one of the peasants echoes, and they exchange a dark look.

Emma flicks her thumb against a finger, a nervous habit she'd thought she'd given up years ago. "Look, I'm willing to help stop Regina, but I'm only here because of Henry." _And the Huntsman, and Snow, _but the enormity of fighting for so many people isn't something she wants to contemplate right now or she'll probably give up altogether.

"It's like Snow all over again," one of the dwarves mumbles, and Emma glances at him, curious.

"Snow?"

Grumpy is still the unofficial group leader, and he stares back, his eyes hostile. "We'll do whatever it takes to destroy the queen." His hands are twisting, his fists clenching and unclenching, and Emma gets the distinct sense that he's not being as honest as he could be.

But the blonde royal is nodding, her eyes sympathetic but determined, and the peasants are agreeing with the dwarves, and Emma is suddenly more unsure than ever that allying with this resistance is a good idea. It's only when Rumpelstiltskin raises disarming fingers and says, "Well then, I'm sure a compromise can be arranged," that the room settles down and heads are lowered in grudging acceptance- or fear of Rumpelstiltskin, more likely, but Emma doesn't want to count on him, either.

Only Jefferson is still staring at her, a cold smile playing at the edge of his lips, and he slinks back to his corner as swiftly as he'd emerged from it.

She stalks across the room, watching the royals draw back and the peasants stare and the dwarves tense as she passes them, heading for the sunlight now dimming near the entrance to the mines.

"Wait." Rumpelstiltskin's voice is honeyed with promises and threats all wrapped together, and Emma pauses, waiting, her back to the resistance. "We will meet again after sunset in two days' time, Emma Swan."

Emma doesn't turn around, and when she speaks, it's less certain than anything else she's done today. "I'll be there."

"I don't doubt it." Rumpelstiltskin giggles, high-pitched enough to bring on goosebumps, and Emma hurries for the light.

* * *

_This one's a bit shorter than usual and unbetaed, but I'm just glad to have ~something for y'all! :)_

_Oh and hey, if you're reading this fic and enjoying (or not!), I'd love to hear how it's going for you! I'm in a bit of a writing slump right now and feedback always helps~ 3_


	9. Chapter 9

She's tempted by the tavern and fairy dust-laced alcohol but reluctant to stay in town with the weight of all that's happened today. It's impossible for her to walk up to Snow's friend and not speak about what she knows now, about what she's _done _today, not without the guilt of it written all over her face.

And she can't go back yet, not to the Huntsman's stony statue and Regina's smug face, to a queen she doesn't trust and around whom she can't trust herself.

_And that's the worst part. _She scuffs her boot in the dirt as she wanders through the woods, never straying out of sight of the path home. She doesn't know if she wants to kiss Regina or kill her anymore, and she has ample memory of the former to fuel her on, even when she's angry and guilty and hates herself for it. The memories of the past day are hitting her all at once, and when it comes to Regina-

_Regina cold and furious, Regina's hands outstretched toward the Huntsman, Regina panting under her grip, Regina's lips on her neck ohgodohgodohgod-_

She's shaking. What from, she's afraid to say. It isn't the first time she's made a terrible decision regarding her love life- Neal comes to mind, though now that she's met Henry the regrets are fading swiftly into different regrets altogether- but never has it been this bad, has she been drawn to someone so evil even the storybooks have tacked it onto her name. And Emma is dreading facing her again.

In the end, it's hunger that spurs her onward, closer to the castle and further from the resistance that fills her with another kind of dread. It's after dusk and there's an ominous howling in the distance, and Emma quickens her step, stumbling through the woods back to a path only barely lit by the glow of the moon overhead. Her stomach is growling, memories of the breakfast she'd discarded in favor of escaping now fond and tempting, and she's running out of the adrenaline that had kept her going until now.

The castle is a welcome sight when she finally makes it to the door, where the guard looks her up and down with wary skepticism and she notices for the first time what half a day traipsing through underground tunnels and overgrown woods has done to her. She's filthy from the knees down, her boots clogged with mud and her trousers stained with grass and dust. Even her face is feeling a little grimy as she scowls at the guard, out of patience. "You know Regina wants me in here."

The guard grimaces and steps aside, careful not to brush against Emma as she walks past him. The anachronisms of fairy tale land only go so far and she's craving a shower she's never going to get here, but scrubbing herself down with a towel will have to be enough for now. After she eats, of course, and her stomach growls at the reminder.

She refuses to turn her head to eye the corridor where she and the Huntsman had faced Regina earlier, but her eyes still flicker there for a moment long enough to ascertain that the stone figure is gone. It's too much to hope that Regina has reversed the magic and the Huntsman is back and safe, but Emma hadn't seen any changes in the main hall, either, and for a moment she indulges herself, imagines Regina's magic as temporary and the Huntsman waiting by her door, ready to tell her again how much she sucks at running away.

But the door to her room is closed and the hall is empty, and when she opens it and enters, it's the last person she wants to see who's standing by the window, surveying her kingdom from above. "Regina." It's more tired than angry, Emma too exhausted to fight like she had earlier, and Regina's eyes gleam with barely contained malice.

"Miss Swan, where in a thousand hells have you been?" Her voice is sharp and demanding, and when she takes a step closer Emma takes one back.

Regina is right in front of her in a moment, invading her personal space all over again and Emma's stomach twists, not uncomfortably. "_Emma_," she says silkily, the name running across her tongue like liquid velvet. "Tell me where you went." Her hand is gliding along Emma's waist, fingers dipping into the band of her pants with no regard for the dirt that's beginning to feel like a second skin, and Emma can barely remember where she _had _been, let alone conjure a lie.

"Drink!" she finally blurts out, shoving the queen back as she does. Regina's eyes glitter dangerously at her rejection, but Emma is able to think straight again. "I went to get a drink," she snaps, angry all over again with the woman who's seducing her so readily.

"All day?" Regina retorts, but she doesn't try to touch Emma again.

Emma narrows her eyes. "I wasn't exactly in a hurry to get back."

Regina raises her neck, high and regal and Emma wants to kiss a trail up it right now- _no!_- she flushes and Regina persists, ignoring her sudden fluster. "I will not have you running off to consort with the villagers whenever you have a tantrum. There is-"

"_Tantrum_?" Emma echoes, and she's the one stepping forward this time, hunger forgotten for the fury that Regina is rapidly drawing forth. "You turned the Huntsman to stone!"

"He is mine to do with as I please!" Regina snaps back. She doesn't retreat from Emma's approach, and Emma jabs a finger at her, sparking at contact.

"Turn him back!" She's up against Regina, eyes dark and flashing, her heart pounding in time to the needy lust that her rage summons forth.

"I _tried_!" Regina hisses back. "I tried a hundred times!" And Emma is so stunned at that admission that she freezes in place, so close that she can feel Regina's breath cool against her lips. The queen sags nearly imperceptibly, just a faint submission. "It's linked to the curse," she murmurs against Emma's lips- and they are close enough that Emma can feel the whisper of breath, the movement of the other woman's lips brushing her own. "It can't be undone."

This is still her doing, even if she's regretted one aspect of this curse, and Emma shakes with the knowledge of what's been lost. "Then break the curse," she hisses, and when Regina chooses to close the gap between them rather than respond, she's lost.

Their lips clash together and come apart and clash together again, making war rather than love and submitting to the joining that anger and hatred can summon forth; and it's Emma, not Regina, who shoves them down onto the bed in a switching of their positions from days before. Emma, who attacks the neck she'd been eyeing moments before as Regina sighs out her approval underneath her, and Emma who's digging her fingers down to yank up the tight dress that Regina is-

-wearing absolutely nothing underneath. "Miss Swan," Regina growls when she stops, and Emma stares down at lust-addled eyes, wondering how much of this encounter has been planned.

All of it. Of course. Regina hadn't come up here to yell at her.

"Miss _Swan_!" Regina is grinding her hips against Emma's, desperation in every pore, struggling for a release Emma hasn't granted yet. And for the first time since she's gotten to this fucking fairytale land, Emma feels like she has the upper hand here.

"Damn you," Regina hisses, and _wow_ but that power is as intoxicating as Emma's fury and she buries herself in Regina's neck again, biting with more force than she needs to but Regina seems to embrace it, undulating against her and grabbing her waist again, rocking them together with unrestrained need. Emma shoves her fingers into her without preamble and Regina jolts against her, her head crashing against the wall, her fingers tightening enough to bruise on Emma's thighs, her knees seizing up on either side of Emma.

When she comes, it isn't with a scream but with a sharp exhalation, and Emma lifts her head to see Regina's eyes shut, her lips parted and shaky panting the only indication of what she's feeling. She can only take an instant to marvel at a woman so closed off that she can't even express herself at a moment of total abandon before Regina is yanking her up and out of her. She thinks this might be the moment when she remembers herself but then the queen is throwing her against the wall, tearing her dirty tunic down the center with the distaste of a curled lip and licking a path through the sweat on her chest toward her navel and lower still.

And then Emma is naked with another dramatic rip- and Regina does like destroying the clothing she's given Emma, doesn't she- and Regina's dress has slid up her torso enough for Emma to pull it over her head and off just in time for a wash of pleasure that starts with Regina's tongue, toying with an ultrasensitive clit, and shoots upward into her every nerve until she can't remember anger or humiliation or hatred, just _ReginaRegina_ and the pure pleasure she's giving her now.

Her hands are tangled in Regina's hair, winding through the elaborately styled updo and tearing her hair free from it without any conscious thought as the other woman continues licking Emma's most sensitized places, winding her tongue within her with practiced skill. She's helpless in all the ways she'd felt empowered before, writhing under Regina's ministrations and craving more, more, more, until there's finally no space for anything else and she's sobbing out her release into Regina's mouth, tasting herself on Regina's lips and shuddering against her and clutching and twisting hardened tips and bringing the other woman right back to the brink and over as she comes, over and over and over again.

She's still shaking when it stops and Regina's grip loosens, and then the queen is staring down at her, eyes still hooded with lust, her hair spread out around her like a dark halo surrounding the devil itself. "Dammit," Emma murmurs, her brain catching up much too late, the room still as heated from Regina's presence as it had been before, and that's enough for Regina to roll off of her and land on her feet on the ground like a fucking cat, still as graceful as she'd been before they'd touched.

She tugs her dress back on and ties her hair back into a simple ponytail as Emma stares at the smooth curves of her back, and when she leaves the room she looks nearly as presentable as always. She doesn't turn around to look at Emma, naked spread-eagle across the bed.

There's no guard stationed at the door for the rest of the night, and Emma feels dirty beyond the sweat and come and grime that she's already covered in, as though she'd bought her freedom with the queen's release.

Sleep is more elusive than ever tonight.

* * *

Still, though, she isn't going to pass up the chance to find Henry, now that she's been given a clear line to him. She wakes up late in the afternoon and quickly eats the food that's been left for her and scrubs herself off until she feels presentable.

She doesn't contemplate what she'd done- _again_- last night. It's easier to focus on Henry now than to sink into the puddle of self-loathing and lust that she's been lying in all night, than considering how much of herself she's compromised yesterday. She's never been one for introspection or regrets, not when there are so many to consider when she begins, and now isn't a good time to fall prey to them.

And when she finds Henry in the library and his face lights up like she's everything in the world that matters, she can't remember any of it anymore.

He's hugging her tightly, arms wrapped around her waist and head pressed to her stomach, and she drops to her knees in his embrace so that she can hold him back with equal vigor. "I missed you," he whispers into her ear, and she leans her forehead against his shoulder, wondering how she'd gone so long without this little boy in her life.

"I'm here now, Henry," she murmurs.

They stand together for a long time, until Henry gets antsy and pulls away, his eyes bright. "So is my mother letting you stay with me again?" he asks.

She can only shrug in response. "I can't predict your mother's whims." His face falls, and she hurries on. "But let's enjoy the time we have for now."

He nods, his face lighting up again. "I want to show you what I found!" he says, pulling her to the laptop. "Look!"

She peers over and almost laughs, because he's been drawing elaborate designs on MsPaint, of all programs, showing it to her as though it's the most novel thing about his computer. "It's wonderful," she agrees.

"Isn't it?" He beams. "I made that all by myself. Painting! On the computer!" He's tried to scribble something next to one awkward stick figure- it's one with blonde curls and something long and silver protruding from its stick-hand, and Emma squints at the words, trying to make them out.

"That's nothing," Henry says quickly, following her gaze. He slams the laptop closed a hair too quickly and jumps up, heading to one of the couches at the other end of the room.

Emma follows, bemused. "So where's Snow today?"

Henry shrugs. "She said I could have some free time today. I think something happened to the Huntsman and she was upset." He stares down at the ground, and Emma feels a pang for the boy whose mother has forced him to grow up too fast. "Do you think she'll change him back?"

Emma drops down to sit next to him, the memory of it still painful. "I don't think she can, Henry. Not without the curse being broken."

"Oh." Henry leans into her, molding himself against the crook of her arm. "He was nice. The Huntsman…he was always nice to me."

"Hopefully that savior of Snow's will come soon and help him out, huh?"

Henry squirms in his seat. "Maybe. Maybe it'll just make things worse." He chews his lip, his eyes troubled. "Evil always wins, doesn't it? Even if Good is really strong."

"No!" And she's feeling guilty and upset at this little boy losing even more of his innocence, watching people he's known his whole life vanish from the evil queen's fury.

She moves to kneel in front of him, to force him to look into her eyes. "Evil fights dirty, but good will win in the end, Henry. And your savior will come someday and even Regina won't be able to stop her." She believes in the very questionable resistance more than she believes in the savior, but _Henry _needs to believe in something, something good and right and pure beyond this dark castle, and the savior is the lifeline she clings to now. He's a little boy in a fairytale land, and he needs a fairytale of his own now, too. "She'll break the curse and the Huntsman and Snow's prince will be back, and we'll make sure that Regina can't hurt anyone ever again."

Henry smiles a half smile at her, though his eyes are still troubled. "There are so many people she's hurting. She hurt the Huntsman and Snow and you, and also all those people in the town. I want the savior to free them all. I want them to be safe and happy with Snow and Prince Charming and the savior ruling over them." He sighs, wistful. "I don't want her to hurt anyone anymore."

And Emma has to inhale to keep tears from emerging unbidden, straining at her face until she's afraid she might reveal too much to this precious little boy who loves all his mother hates, who wants only to protect the people who loathe him on principle. She thinks of Grumpy, cursing Henry's name; of one of the peasants, suggesting methods to hurt Regina through Henry; of even the blonde royal who'd seemed so reasonable until she'd agreed that they'd use the son however they were able.

_He would be a compassionate king_, she thinks suddenly, realizing that Henry's path is leading him unswervingly in that direction. _If they'd only let him._

"Hey, kid." Henry's staring at her, puzzled, and she knows that she's revealed too much. She forces a smile onto her face and racks her brain for a distraction. "Come on. I'm going to teach you some stuff on the computer."

It's easy enough to find some online shooting games for him to play and Henry settles right into them with glee, pounding at the keyboard and urging her on. "Come on, Emma, there are three zombies on your right!" He fires past her and she has to pull her avatar back to avoid his enthusiastic shot. "I'm going to protect you!"

"Yeah, you are," she says, grinning, and aims for the dangerous-looking spider that's lowering itself above Henry's character. "I've got you covered."

It's so surprisingly _normal_. They're sitting in a library straight out of Beauty and the Beast, in an actual castle in Maine, at the grace of an evil queen- but there are video games and zombies and a boy who never thinks to ration his gun's output before he runs out of steam and Emma can, for a moment, imagine that her reunion with her son had played out in another way entirely, in the world that she's known her whole life and can deal with so much more easily. A world without magic, without people turning to stone and other people plotting, so much plotting, to overthrow a terrible dictator who rules through fear and the power of her curse.

She can't regret her decision to give Henry up- and she couldn't possibly have known where he'd wind up- but she longs for the simplicity of that old world regardless, with the company of this little boy she's beginning to love. How easy could it have been, had she not been a prisoner when they'd met, has his mother been someone else entirely? She licks chapped lips, wondering if she'd have hated Regina in another scenario, if she'd still been the same woman but without the magic that gives her cruelty purchase.

Or if…

She doesn't want to think about that. The evil queen is complicated enough without playing with what-ifs, wondering what else she could have been. She's toyed with that idea before and wound up locked up for a week. So she buries herself back in the blissful emptiness of slapping a keyboard and teasing her son, and she thinks she could keep doing this for a long time.

When she next looks up, Regina is standing in the doorway of the library, staring at them both. There's an undecipherable emotion on her face, and Emma can't tell if she's angry or just taken aback.

Emma nudges Henry and he blinks at her. "What? I was about to open that box!" He gestures at the screen just as he catches sight of his mother, waiting patiently to be acknowledged. "Mother." He twitches, his finger pressing the X button down until his virtual gun is empty.

"Henry." Regina is still staring at both of them, at how Henry flinches when she says his name and Emma can't seem to look away. "It's past dinnertime. I suggest you make your way downstairs now, before I decide that Miss Swan is too harmful a distraction for you."

Henry is out the door faster than Emma has ever seen him, running past his mother and down the hall without so much as a goodbye to either of them, and Emma is left to glare at his mother, annoyed. "He's terrified enough of you without you threatening to take away someone else he cares about, Regina. Can't you go easy on him for a few days?"

"Someone else-" Regina shakes her head. "Don't tell me you told him about the Huntsman."

"I didn't have to." Their eyes meet and clash, and Emma is suddenly trapped in Regina's gaze again, helpless and frustrated and- yes, still wanting- and they scorch each other with loathing and need and dangerous desire; and Emma is about to stand, to _do _something if Regina won't, when the queen takes a step back.

She closes the double doors as she steps out, and the last thing Emma sees is Regina's face, cold but for the cracks where emotion seeps through.


	10. Chapter 10

"The question isn't _how _to infiltrate," one of the peasants is arguing over a map. "It's who you plan on sending in this time. No more children."

The older royal scowls at him across the table. "We will do what needs to be done. Your girl's failure is of no consequence."

"No consequence!" The peasant slams his hands on the table. "The queen had her thrown in the dungeons for months! If we hadn't-"

"Enough." It's Rumpelstiltskin who speaks, and everyone falls silent at once, glancing nervously up. "No children will be sent in-" There's a collective sigh of relief. "_If _we have a better-equipped adult who is willing to go." Uneasy silence reigns, and the blonde royal- whom Emma has since discovered is a princess named Abigail- lets out a single frustrated sigh.

This is the third meeting Emma has come to since the original one last week, and only a scattering of the people who'd been present at the first are here tonight. Most of the royals don't come to the meetings, it seems, unwilling to engage with treason and Rumpelstiltskin unless they're specifically beckoned, and most of the peasants aren't even told about many of the meetings. And today's topic is sensitive enough that only the inner circle of the resistance has been invited.

And Emma.

She hangs back in the shadows, more uncomfortable than ever now that the reality of her position here is hitting her at last. She doesn't want to…she doesn't know what she wants to do.

"Swan!" Grumpy is calling her over, and she steps out of the shadows, twisting her fingers together and apart and together again. "You been to the palace kitchens?"

She nods, reluctant, and remembers those first few days with the Huntsman, eating meals far from the queen or her room. "It isn't just younger kids there. There are definitely some twenty-something women, and probably a few men, too. Some older servants too, but they'd notice someone new in their ranks." The girls had fawned over the Huntsman and given her dirty looks for accompanying him, and she'd focused on food and ignored them all.

"Why don't we just send her?" The older royal jabs a thumb at Emma, and Emma stares back, her eyes cold and her stomach roiling. "If she is indeed loyal to the cause, we don't need to sacrifice another peasant to the castle." His mouth twists into a smirk, and there's no doubt in Emma's mind that he couldn't care less about placing a peasant in harm's way. "Would we?"

His eyes are challenging but Emma doesn't flinch. It had been easier that first day to talk about killing Regina, when she'd been spurred forward with righteous fury and grief. But it's been over a week, and a week where she's been left unchained, where she's seen Regina stare at Henry as though he's everything in the world to her, where she's had a nighttime visitor too many times to write it off as a fluke.

More nights than not, Regina is waiting for her when she returns to her room from time with Snow or the resistance or outside the castle for a drink. They don't address this, don't have anything beyond scathing insults and seething hatred and contemptuous desire, but it's enough to make Emma feel a bit nauseous at the idea of delivering the final blow in the takedown of the evil queen. Or the poison, as it is.

"I'm afraid that won't work at all," Rumpelstiltskin trills. Belle isn't here today, Emma notices. She hadn't been invited to the last meeting, where they'd discussed the possibility of poisoning the queen for the first time, either. "Miss Swan is our final trump card, not to be wasted on a desperate assassination attempt, are you, dearie?" He smiles at her toothily and she folds her arms against her stomach and looks away, unable to keep his gaze without displaying her uncertainty.

Her eyes hit Grumpy's instead, and she quickly looks down. "Look, she has a good doctor." One of the dwarves snickers, and it takes a quelling look from Abigail before he quiets, serious again. "I don't know how effective any of your poison will be against the Internet."

"In-ter-net?" Jefferson repeats from somewhere behind her. "Is that a cure Frankenstein has developed?"

"Something like that, yeah." She wonders what it might be that they'll send, imagines Regina's body contorted or damaged or very, very pale. She wonders why she cares, when Regina deserves nothing less.

_For Henry_. For Henry, who loves his mother when he isn't busy being afraid of her. She thinks of an afternoon several days ago, when Snow had taken over teaching Henry archery and Regina had come down to watch them. She'd sneered at Snow and at Emma but then she'd crouched down next to Henry and helped him position his hands, and when he'd hit the target he'd jumped and hugged her in delight and she'd folded into his arms.

Sometimes she's a mother, and one who does have that girl- the girl who'd save a life and fall in love with a boy beneath her station and lose everything at once- buried somewhere inside her. She's been angry and vengeful for so long that it defines the Regina that Emma knows, but it's the mother _(and the lover, oh, what Regina can do with her hands and her hips and that talented tongue, and she is demanding but just as eager to turn Emma into a babbling mess beneath her)_ whose face she thinks of in the end.

Still, she gives them as much information as she can about entering the castle in proper servant garb and how best to make it up from the dungeons to the kitchens without being seen. She might not like it- might not be comfortable with what will come from it- but she can't stop it, either. Not when Henry's mother is also a tyrant who's imprisoned a kingdom. When so many suffer as long as she lives, and whatever goodness Emma sees is just as likely a mirage.

She can't leave the dwarf mines fast enough tonight, and when Rumpelstiltskin deems their plans sufficient, she's already halfway up the earthy stairs toward the moonlit town before Grumpy catches up to her. "Easy, Swan, slow it down!" He's panting, his short legs moving as rapidly as they can to follow her, and she stops, staring down at him. He smiles. It looks alien on his sunken face, wrinkled with years of glumness. "I just want to buy you a drink."

"Buy me a drink?" Emma repeats dubiously. "Last time we were at a table together, Red's grandmother shot a hole through the ceiling."

He shakes his head, fists bunching up for a moment and loosening. "I just…I want to know about Snow," he mutters, and Emma can't refuse that. Snow has friends here, people who love her regardless of how they feel about the savior, and she had once been queen, even if it had been stolen away so quickly. It had never been _Snow White _but _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves_, and Emma can give Grumpy this much.

They sit down at a table at the tavern and Red brings them drinks, glancing curiously at both of them. Grumpy stares down at his cup, his voice gruff as he asks, "Is she being treated well? Has the queen been making her suffer?"

"Yeah." Emma downs her drink, probably faster than she should. "Regina isn't fond of her, but she has it pretty easy. She's Henry's tutor, and Regina knows better than to hurt the people he cares about."

Grumpy snorts, clapping his glass on the table until Red returns with a pitcher. "And the spoiled little prince? Has he been tormenting her in his mother's place?"

Emma's hackles are raised at that, and her second glass is gone as quickly as the first. Grumpy pours her the next one on automatic. "Henry's a good kid. A really good kid." The taste of ale is growing on her- and yes, the sneer on the dwarf's lips when he talks about Henry is helping with that- and she takes another drink. It spreads warmth through her body, enough that Grumpy's words are starting to sound distant as magic quickens intoxication.

"He's the queen's child," Grumpy corrects. "There's nothing good about him."

"You don't even know him!" Emma swallows, the fuzzy aftertaste of fairy dust caught in her throat. "He's _good _and he's gentle and he's the only reason Regina hasn't killed Snow or me, I'm pretty sure. And while you're all sitting around cursing his name, he's just as desperate for you all to be saved as you are." The words are coming out wrong, garbled by the fairy dust that's slowing down her system, but she thinks that she's gotten her point across anyway.

Grumpy is shrugging, his face still sour and dubious. "You're his mother, too. You're going to see what you want to see. And Snow-"

"Snow loves him!"

"Snow loves the daughter she lost!" Grumpy snaps at her, and he's eyeing her oddly for a moment, almost expectant, so she stretches out her glass for him to pour her more. "And displacing those feelings onto her evil stepmother's son is a sick perversion." He tips more ale into his glass, sloshing it on the table. "She does what she must to survive, but it's time we save her from herself." He shakes his head, and Emma blinks, seeing several Grumpys materialize with the movement. "We've allied with Rumpelstiltskin before, and I'd do it again. For her."

The fairy dust is muddling everything now, and when Red refills their pitcher, it's with quiet disapproval. Emma wants to argue, but she's swaying in her seat and the room is moving around her, and the most reasonable retort seems at that moment to be, "Your nose is so much bigger in the movie." She snickers and pokes it, and Grumpy has no response to _that_, so she stands, her point proven. "Henry is going to save you all," she announces, and faces turn around the tavern. None of them seem very friendly. "And I'm going to…"

"Emma!" Red's hurrying over to her, a hand stretched out to slide under her elbows and pull her from the crowd. She flashes a smile at the rest of the occupants and then she's tugging Emma with her, murmuring something to her grandmother and leading Emma out into the night air.

"I'm not that sober," Emma complains. "I mean undrunk."

"No, you are not," Red agrees, helping Emma down the path from the tavern. "I'm going to take you home, alright? Not going to leave you to those men." She sighs. "You can stay with us, if the queen won't set the tavern on fire over it."

"She'll be waiting," Emma agrees. "She's always waiting for me." She smiles for a moment, the fairy dust strong enough to add a dreamy quality to her memories of Regina below her, head thrown back and eyes hooded over with desire and fury and loathing. It's nice, really, and it feels like…

"It's okay, Emma!" Red cuts off her thoughts, a vague hysteria to her tone. "I get the idea!"

Maybe she'd been thinking aloud, she doesn't know. Red is still leading her, but now she's turning to dart glances at her every few moments, looking confused or impressed or maybe slightly terrified. It's hard to make out her features when they keep blurring on her face. For a moment, Red sighs and tips her face upward pleadingly, and to Emma's shaky gaze, the glow of the moon reflects orange off her eyes. "I drank too much," she decides.

"You had an entire pitcher of enchanted alcohol," Red agrees, shaking her head. "Come on."

She doesn't really remember much of what happens before she's standing near the castle and Red is urging her to step forward, across the grounds where she can't enter. "Go to Snow," she calls after Emma. "She'll help you the rest of the way!"

But it's Regina who's waiting for her in the main hall of the castle, one eyebrow arched as she takes in a still-very-inebriated Emma. "Pull yourself together," she orders, waving a hand, and they abruptly change location.

_Whoa_. Emma sways, nearly falling over into Regina. There's a cloud of purple smoke fading around them to reveal the queen's bedchamber, which she's only barely glimpsed before. It's decorated in blacks and purples and reds, an ornate mirror glittering above a chest of drawers just to the right of a bed that Emma decides is rather hilariously queen-sized. Most of the room is bare, though, a large empty area between them and the door, and the only other bit of furniture in the room is a day bed just below long windows to their left.

Regina lets out an irritated exhalation and Emma is suddenly lying on her back on the bed. "How much did you drink?"

"Lots," Emma admits. The blanket below her smells like Regina, musky and sharp and intoxicating as fairy dust, and she burns with her presence.

The woman in question is hovering above her, her nose wrinkled and her lip curled. "You smell repulsive," she says, and then her lips are on Emma's and when she pulls away, Emma can taste her and nothing else, the nasty aftertaste of alcohol gone and replaced. "Really, Miss Swan, you need to build a resistance or stop drinking every night." There's nothing but disdain in Regina's voice now. "What is this, the third night in the past week?"

Emma laughs. "Build a resistance!" _No. Bad topic. _She blinks up at Regina again, squinting at her eyes, soft and inviting and plump over the edge of her dress…no, those are not her eyes. "I feel kind of…" The fairy dust is twisting her stomach, and she rolls onto her side and gags, curling up into a ball beneath Regina.

There's something very motherly in the way that Regina produces a wet handkerchief from thin air and presses it to her forehead, a hand brushing Emma's hair from her face with what's almost gentleness before she says, her voice still sharp, "I'm going to magic away that fairy dust before you do something even more foolish and Henry never forgives me."

"Oh. Okay. For Henry," she agrees. Regina's lips are on hers again in the next moment, her hands pinning Emma's down onto the bed, and Emma can feel magic tugging through her, the gentle tingling of intoxication speeding up and reaching a crescendo of energy within her, purple dust joining with dark magic and pulling something deep inside her, tightening her core until she's mostly sober and gasping, thrusting her hips upward to crash into the other woman's. Her legs clamp around Regina's waist instinctively and the queen's grip on her hands tightens, fingers curving to lace between hers.

And then she can see Regina's eyes as they fly open in shock and she's arching upward, and something white and powerful comes rushing from within Emma to crash into Regina's magic. She doesn't know what it is, doesn't know what it's doing, but Regina's lips are parted and she's shaking and her eyes are rolling up in her head as the white energy surrounds her.

The queen isn't thrown backward this time but Emma recognizes it as the energy that had shot through her when she'd tried to take Emma's heart, and now it's overwhelming, washing over both of them, running into the dark magic and the fairy dust and they're all sliding into each other at once, graying as they join into one. Emma's heart is pounding and she can feel Regina's pulse against her, rapping out a staccato beat into her skin as she writhes against her. It's impossible to breathe, like she's just been abruptly stopped after running for miles, and every movement feels sluggish and immediate at the same time, and when she finally raises her face to meet Regina's lips, the magic surges through the contact, so strong and thick that she doesn't dare rip her lips away.

It's like being high, it's like being terrified, it's like being in love, and the rush of the magic sparks with everything they do, each time Regina's nails scrape against Emma's back- and she's naked, they're both naked, how did they lose their clothes- each time Emma's lips brush against Regina's heated skin- it's boiling like a furnace and it freezes her when she keeps them there too long- each time they move as one- and it's sinuous and seductive and every bare inch of her skin is suddenly an erogenous zone, lit alive and scorching from the woman abovebelowabove her.

She comes a hundred times as the magic tugs at her most sensitive spots and sets them aflame as though Regina is touching them on her own, and Regina is quivering as they move together, trembling with uncontained sensations. She can feel all of Regina at once, her whole body laid bare before Emma's magic, and when she imagines it enveloping her, deep in places where nerve endings are sensitized, even Regina lets out a choked sob.

Her body is a canvas upon which Emma can paint epics, an instrument with a thousand strings that Emma needs only to touch to create passionate, intricate melodies. The magic is _everywhere_, and for a minute Emma's sure that they're floating and somehow Regina's hands have broken free from her grasp and one is clenched in her hair and the other clenched inside her, and Emma's teeth sink into an inviting breast and Regina jerks.

They both come once- once, the big time, the one where the magic reaches its peak and they're both caught as it hits breaking point and spills over them, sending a thousand little pleasures through each of their bodies– Emma's vision goes black but she doesn't pass out- can't pass out, not when her entire body is churning with power and pleasure and pain and the magic surges through her again and again- she rides it, lets it wash over her and is caught in the undertow as a willing captive to the swell.

The magic fades and Regina sags, boneless, into Emma's arms. Emma searches for a caustic remark but there's nothing to say, no energy left to speak, just the sensation of sweat slicked against skin against skin and Regina's legs still tangled in hers. "Wh-" Her throat is dry and it takes a few tries before she can speak. "What the _hell_?"

Regina's head droops again, and she's almost harmless like this, just another woman who Emma can pretend for a moment isn't twisted and murderous and evil. "That wasn't-" She pauses, looks up, and for this moment she's an open book, all malice gone and replaced with a quiet sorrow that Emma doesn't understand. "That wasn't all me." Then the mask is back in place, imperious and dark and disdainful, and Regina is out of her arms in the next moment, standing over her. Her dress is half off the bed and completely shredded beyond repair, and Emma contentedly watches her glide over to the table beside the mirror to don a silk robe before Regina's words sink in.

"Me?" Emma's arms are working enough for her to sit up, pulling out the blanket she'd been lying on to wrap it around herself. "You think that _I _have magic? I don't even come from your world!"

"This world has some magic. It's shoddy and unpredictable, but it's still there." Regina is staring into the mirror, and for an instant it almost looks as though the mirror is staring back. "You would be the exception to the rule, wouldn't you, Miss Swan." It's almost affectionately derisive, and Emma rolls her eyes, unimpressed.

"Show me what to do with it?" It's a demand as much as it's a request, the magic powering her still humming strong and tempting and freeing, and Regina laughs a rich and scornful peal of hilarity.

"Oh, Emma." She waves a hand and Emma is fully clothed, wearing a tunic and pants like the ones that Regina claims to loathe on her. She drawls out the next words with the dark command of an evil queen. "Get out."

Emma shakes her head, unwilling to comply just yet. Not when there's a world within her that she's never conceived of before, when only Regina can explain it to her. "I'm not going-"

"Out!" the queen snaps, and Emma's thrown forward by a whirlwind of magic, the door flying open and Emma propelled through the doorway to land with a crash in the hall outside. The door slams shut before Emma can stand and she pulls herself up wearily, stretching sore muscles as she turns to walk away.

She stares.

Snow stares back at her, a hand to her open mouth, her eyes wide and watery and horrified.


End file.
